Ray Kurzweil?s Blio E-Book Launch Met With Confusion, Controversy

Updated at 5:30 p.m. Eastern to add comment from K-NFB.

This week, K-NFB, an e-reading company founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind, launched its much-anticipated Blio reading app and e-book store. Blio was immediately and widely panned by publishers, developers and readers.

?Many of the failures are fundamentally at odds with the one thing that Kurzweil was touting above all else: accessibility,? wrote Laura Dawson, a digital reading industry consultant, formerly of BarnesAndNoble.com. K-NFB initially promised to make e-books more accessible to blind readers; yet Windows, currently its only enhanced books platform, has known text-to-speech conversion issues.

K-NFB and Kurzweil responded by saying the software had been released before a fully-accessible version was ready, and that they plan to release an improved version next week.

?People understandably have very high expectations,? Kurzweil said in an interview with Wired.com Thursday. ?We believe Blio is very usable and has many features other book formats don?t. And there are many features that we want to add.?

In addition to bug fixes and other tweaks, an accessibility release scheduled for October 25 will work with Freedom Scientific?s JAWS, screen reader software for Windows specifically tailored for blind users. The 1.0 version released Tuesday relied on Windows? built-in text-to-speech capabilities.

K-NFB spokesperson Peter Chapman acknowledged the problems with Blio?s text-to-speech in an interview with Publishers Weekly, but blamed the platform, not the books: ?the TTS software on most Windows machines isn?t very good.? Yet many Windows XP users were unable to even install Blio?s software. (This has since been resolved.)

K-NFB also confirmed that an iOS 4 version for iPhone and iPod Touch is currently in private beta, and that an iPad version will shortly follow the iPhone, probably sometime after November?s release of iOS 4.2. Android and Mac OS X versions are also in development.

Users weren?t the only ones frustrated with Blio. Hadrien Gardeur, founder and CEO of free e-books site FeedBooks, complained on Twitter that Blio was offering downloads from FeedBooks? catalog without permission: ?Hey Blio, next time that you add our OPDS [Open Publishing Distribution System] catalog to a commercial product, send us an e-mail first.?

In a follow-up e-mail, Gardeur noted that FeedBooks only allows other systems to include their catalog under the following conditions:

• full support for the EPUB standard (Blio converts EPUB into its own format and can?t support EPUB with other companies? DRM)
• support the entire OPDS catalog (Blio only includes some of FeedBooks? feeds)
• Add other OPDS catalogs to its library (Blio can?t do that)
• allow payment for commercial content through open standards (Blio doesn?t)

For these reasons, Gardeur asked Blio not to include FeedBooks? content in its initial launch; according to Gardeur, K-NFB went ahead and included part of Feedbooks? OPDS catalog anyways. Since FeedBooks has a planned system update forthcoming, it will most likely break Blio?s access to the catalog.

Kurzweil stated Thursday that K-NFB was continuing to work with Feedbooks and other free book providers; he credited the dispute over Blio?s use of their feeds to a miscommunication.

Finally, as we noted earlier this week, Toshiba launched its own branded version of the Blio application, store and e-book catalog called Toshiba Book Place. Toshiba is offering 6,000 titles at launch; Blio 11,000. This puts Blio at a distinct disadvantage against the 700,000 e-books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers for sale from Amazon and Barnes & Noble?s library of over 1,000,000 e-books.

It?s not precisely clear why there?s a gap in the number of books offered by Toshiba and Blio. But the brand and store fragmentation is another confusing component of a deeply confusing product launch. It?s especially troubling for those who have been hoping for serious innovation in making e-readers accessible to users of all abilities.

Image via Blio.com

See Also:

• UPDATE: Toshiba, Blio Jump In With Enhanced E-Books For Laptops ?
• Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again ?
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Apple's Tablet E-Book App Rips off Indie Dev's Creation
• Amazon's Kindle 2 Pits Authors Versus the Blind
• Apple's iPad Will Read Books Out Loud, Support Free E-Books ?
• Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind ?

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Light-Trails Show Cleaning Robot is Tirelessly Loyal

The folks at BotJunkie didn?t trust their brand new Mint floor-mopping robot, so they decided to spy on it. Whilst testing out the little square bot?s cleaning skills, reviewer Evan Ackerman took these long-exposure photographs to track Mint?s movements in the dark, when it thought it couldn?t be seen. The one above shows Mint in sweep-mode, running back and forth in straight (ish) lines to brush dirt from uncarpeted floors. The blank section you see at bottom left was caused by Ackerman?s evil cat, which Mint politely avoided.

The next photograph shows Mint mopping. When loaded up with a wet, soapy mop, the robot scrubs back and forth on a spot to get things shiny and clean. You can see the zig-zagging pattern in the picture.

Overall, Ackerman likes the Mint. It?s silent (no vacuum cleaner) and cheap ($250) and when it stops to work out where it is (using a separate ?North Star? box that projects a Mint-visible pattern onto the ceiling), it flashes its lights as it thinks. Ackerman calls this ?cute? and ?adorable.? Ahhh. Best of all, it works tirelessly and behaves itself, even when you?re not watching. Not like that damned cat.

Evolution Robotics Mint Sweeper [Bot Junkie]

Photos: Evan Ackerman

See Also:

• Mint, A Robot Mop for Civilized Homes
• Urban Roverbot Goes Where the Roomba Can't
• Neato Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Challenges the Roomba
• Long Exposure Shows Web-Like Roomba Light-Trail
• Roomba-Maker Unveils Kill-Bot

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Kobo Updates E-Reader with Wi-Fi, Price-Drop

Kobo, the independent e-reader company that could, has updated its popular e-book. It gets a price-drop, a few tweaks and one big new feature.

Kobo started out as client-software on mobile devices and now exists on everything from the iPad to the PC to the upcoming Blackberry PlayBook. It has also been selling well in its physical incarnation, and this new model replaces the old, shaving $10 off the price (it is now $140) and adding much-needed Wi-Fi. Previously, you?d need to download purchases from the Kobo store to your computer and send them to the Kobo via Bluetooth or USB. Now, with Wi-Fi, you can shop direct, just like you can with Amazon?s Kindle. You can also have magazines and newspapers delivered to the device.

The new reader also has improved, sharper text (in five sizes), 1GB memory (the Wi-Fi Kindle has 2GB) and a battery life of ten days (Kindle, one month). You can, however, stick in an SD-card to increase capacity. The processor has also been upgraded, making page-turns 2.5x faster, and Kobo has added a built-in dictionary.

Unlike the Kindle, the Kobo supports the industry-standard EPUB format, the same as used by Apple?s iBooks, and just like the Kindle, any of your books will stay in sync across your various applications and devices. It also comes in a variety of colors, including black, ?Pearlized Onyx? and silver (these last two only color the quilted back panel ? the black is black all-over).

Available now.

Kobo reader [Kobo. Thanks, Meghan!]

See Also:

• $150 Kobo eReader: The Real Kindle Killer?
• Kobo E-Reader First on iPad
• Kobo E-readers Offered to Hotel Guests
• Kobo Beats iBooks with International iPad Bookstore, App

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Samurai Star Wars Prints for Sale

Images: Steve Bialik

Artist Steve Bialik has completed his ?Ninja Star : Wars? series, a reimagining of what Star Wars might have looked like if George Lucas hadn?t strayed quite as far from his Kurosawa inspiration, The Hidden Fortress. For $15 a pop, or $75 for the complete set, you can adorn your walls with Japanese woodblock-style prints of Star Wars characters like Admiral Ackbar, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt.

Ninja Star : Wars [via io9.com]

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Samurai Star Wars Prints for Sale

Images: Steve Bialik

Artist Steve Bialik has completed his ?Ninja Star : Wars? series, a reimagining of what Star Wars might have looked like if George Lucas hadn?t strayed quite as far from his Kurosawa inspiration, The Hidden Fortress. For $15 a pop, or $75 for the complete set, you can adorn your walls with Japanese woodblock-style prints of Star Wars characters like Admiral Ackbar, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt.

Ninja Star : Wars [via io9.com]

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Sept. 28, 1865: England Gets Its First Woman Physician, the Hard Way

1865: Elizabeth Garrett becomes the first woman in England to receive a medical license.

It didn?t come easy.

Bound by the restrictions on sex and class that prevailed in Victorian England, Garrett, the daughter of a London pawnbroker, was inspired to enter medicine after meeting Elizabeth Blackwell, the first practicing woman physician in the United States. First, though, Garrett had to overcome the opposition of her parents. Compared to what lay ahead, that was easy.

She tried applying to medical school. Several ? actually all ? turned her down. With the conventional path blocked, Garrett enrolled as a nursing student at Middlesex Hospital. While there, she sat in on some medical classes but was booted after the male students complained.

Nevertheless, she hung in there and continued studying independently. Because the Society of Apothecaries had no rule specifically barring women from taking its medical examination, Garrett took the exam on this day in 1865 and, lo, was one of three candidates (from a field of seven) to pass. It enabled her to obtain a certificate to begin practicing medicine.

(It should be noted that the Society of Apothecaries immediately changed its rules to prevent other women from pulling the same stunt. Not cricket, you know.)

Garrett opened a dispensary for women, and later became a visiting physician to the East London Hospital. Still lacking a formal medical degree, Garrett learned French and slipped across the Channel to the University of Paris, where more enlightened attitudes prevailed. She earned her degree, which the British Medical Register refused to recognize.

Undaunted, Garrett (now Elizabeth Garrett Anderson by marriage) opened the New Hospital for Women in London, which was staffed entirely by women. Elizabeth Blackwell came on staff as a professor of gynecology.

Garrett?s persistence, and subsequent success, shook the British medical establishment to its foundations. The old-boy network finally cracked in 1876, and from then on, women were admitted to British medical schools.

Source: BBC

Image: Elizabeth Garrett/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

This article originally appeared on Wired.com Sept. 28, 2007.

See Also:

• May 5, 1809: Hats Off to First U.S. Woman Patent-Holder
• March 6, 1937: Birth of a Soviet Hero, First Woman Into Space
• June 18, 1983: Sally Ride, the First American Woman Into Space
• July 25: Four Women Who Made a Difference
• Feb. 8, 1865: Mendel Reads Paper Founding Genetics
• April 9, 1865: War Ends, But the Horror's Just Beginning
• Sept. 28, 1998: Internet Explorer Leaves Netscape in Its Wake

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Apple TV Orders Start Shipping

A number of customers who ordered an Apple TV have bragged about receiving shipment notifications for their orders, despite last week?s rumors that the product might see delays.

Some Apple TV orders have been updated to read ?Prepared for shipment? (meaning FedEx is packing the item into a box), so those who placed orders very early could get their new Apple TV as soon as this week.

Last week, some customers who requested expedited shipping received refunds from Apple, who cited a possible delay. It would appear that only new orders might take longer to ship, while the early batch of orders are on schedule for a late September delivery.

See Also:

• Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV
• How Apple Just Disrupted the Cable Guys

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Concept Phone Both Amazing and Unbelievable

I really want to like Billy May?s ambitious concept for a browser-centric, open-web-standards-based phone
But it?s hopelessly unfettered from what?s actually buildable, usable or marketable.
Mozilla Labs has highlighted the phone, which May called Project Seabird, in its ?Concept Series,? a showcase for community-created visions of the web?s future.
May, who is a talented industrial designer, has crammed a lot of interesting ideas into his two-and-a-half-minute video:
a pop-out Bluetooth headset that doubles as an infrared pointer
dual pico projectors that can project both a full-size display as well as a virtual keyboard
wireless charging
a standard mini USB connector
a 3.5mm audio jack
enough processing power to render 3-D spacescapes in real time or display YouTube videos at full resolution.
Because there are two pico projectors, May imagines that one could be used to display a keyboard while the other displays a larger screen. Or, you could place the phone on your desk and have one projector display the left half of an ergonomic split keyboard, while the other projector displays the right half.
Based on the icons May?s painted into his impressive video, it?s running some version of Windows and the browser is Firefox, of course.
The trouble is that current pico projectors fall short in both brightness and clarity: You need to use them in a darkened room, like the one May?s rendering takes place in. Virtual keyboards of the type shown in the video are difficult if not impossible to use. And if netbook processors like the Intel Atom series can barely handle Windows, just imagine how sluggish it will be running on an ARM-based cellphone CPU.
One thing?s for sure: The open-source browser community is going to love this phone.
Those of us in the reality-based community, however, are shaking our heads in disbelief.


Image credit: Billy May
See Also:
Beautiful Concept Phone for HTC Should Be Built
Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept
Concept Phone Mashup: Blackberry vs Optimus Maximus
Squeeze, Grip and Tilt to Control Synaptics? Concept Phone ?
Concept Specs Add 50� to Your Angle of View
Hat tip: Webmonkey

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House Invaded By Kids and Hexbugs ? Call Pest Control!

A couple of weeks ago we hosted a back-to-school party for my six-year-old?s class. We were supplied with a Hexbug party pack from Hexbug consisting of Hexbug Nanos, a Battle Bridge set and Habitat sets and pieces. My family had a great time setting everything up and my wife worked hard creating bug-themed food. We had ?caterpillars? which were Cheetos Puffs with eyes on them, dirt and grass colored cupcakes with gummy bugs on them, ?bug slime? (or blue Kool-Aid, for the layman), the classic ?ants-on-a-log,? and of course gummy bugs and worms.
Once the six and seven-year-olds arrived it was the typical chaos that you would imagine. The kids were quite taken with the little vibrating bugs that looked like multi-color roaches. The activities soon centered on the sets that were built and great times were had by all.
The Battle Bridge was a huge draw. What?s the fun of having robots bugs if they cannot compete on the field of battle? This led to many ?king of the hill? type matches. Two bugs enter, one bug leaves?

Another new element that was sent to us to try was the spiral ascension piece. This allowed the Hexbugs to travel up a higher level to explore. It would be fun to have a few of these, so one could create tall towers of Hexbug habitats with multiple levels of fun.
These things are built kid tough. Everything was dropped from kid height or knocked off a table at one point during the day, with no damage. The Hexbugs themselves are surrounded by rubber (legs and body) so they are pretty tough, but I was really surprised to see how well the habitats are put together. Any parent reading this knows what it is like to put some plastic ?thing? together and have something break ? usually because there is a plastic tab that bends or is made too thin and snaps. The habitats, tracks and bridge sets never had this problem. They are very sturdy, constructed out of heavy grade plastics and reinforced where they need it.

After the party was over, each child took several Hexbugs home (which is a great idea for goody bags) and a pack of batteries. Our neighbor, who is a school teacher, had a class pet die; so we donated some habitats and Hexbugs to the school. Now they have class pets that will offer hours of discussion and will never die ? just add new batteries. The Hexbug line of toys has been out for a while, however they now seem to be getting the attention they deserve. I believe they will be a huge hit this holiday season, especially since the bugs themselves fall into the under $10 price point and the habitats can range in price from $10 to $30. New sets will be arriving in stores soon, so keep an eye out for new exciting products.

Here is another video link that I think is too good not to share. Click here.
All Hexbugs and Habitats were provided by Hexbug. All pictures and video by Tony Sims.

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Concept Phone Both Amazing and Unbelievable

I really want to like Billy May?s ambitious concept for a browser-centric, open-web-standards-based phone
But it?s hopelessly unfettered from what?s actually buildable, usable or marketable.
Mozilla Labs has highlighted the phone, which May called Project Seabird, in its ?Concept Series,? a showcase for community-created visions of the web?s future.
May, who is a talented industrial designer, has crammed a lot of interesting ideas into his two-and-a-half-minute video:
a pop-out Bluetooth headset that doubles as an infrared pointer
dual pico projectors that can project both a full-size display as well as a virtual keyboard
wireless charging
a standard mini USB connector
a 3.5mm audio jack
enough processing power to render 3-D spacescapes in real time or display YouTube videos at full resolution.
Because there are two pico projectors, May imagines that one could be used to display a keyboard while the other displays a larger screen. Or, you could place the phone on your desk and have one projector display the left half of an ergonomic split keyboard, while the other projector displays the right half.
Based on the icons May?s painted into his impressive video, it?s running some version of Windows and the browser is Firefox, of course.
The trouble is that current pico projectors fall short in both brightness and clarity: You need to use them in a darkened room, like the one May?s rendering takes place in. Virtual keyboards of the type shown in the video are difficult if not impossible to use. And if netbook processors like the Intel Atom series can barely handle Windows, just imagine how sluggish it will be running on an ARM-based cellphone CPU.
One thing?s for sure: The open-source browser community is going to love this phone.
Those of us in the reality-based community, however, are shaking our heads in disbelief.


Image credit: Billy May
See Also:
Beautiful Concept Phone for HTC Should Be Built
Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept
Concept Phone Mashup: Blackberry vs Optimus Maximus
Squeeze, Grip and Tilt to Control Synaptics? Concept Phone ?
Concept Specs Add 50� to Your Angle of View
Hat tip: Webmonkey

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Managing Children?s Screentime: How Apps Help

Screentime is a big issue in our household.
As an author and research into child development (and despite my geekiness), I am not comfortable with my children having endless access to the increasing number of screens that inhabit the house. In Adproofing Your Kids, there are a range of strategies about how to manage the amount of time your child spends in front of the TV, computer, iTouch, iPhone, gaming console ? or heck ? just staring at the microwave oven door when it is on.
Why do I have an issue with too much screen time? Well, digital technology and computers obviously provide a whole range of developmental opportunities and spaces to learn and create ? but no one tool is comprehensive. I still want my children to learn how to manage their own boredom and not fill it up with endless games of Mario Cart. I want my kids to have a diversity of experience to go out into the backyard, or down the street to play with friends. I want them world building in Spore, but also world building in their cubby house by playing action hero games, and then world building by drawing and designing with pencils on paper.
The beauty of iPhone and iPads, myself and fellow geek parents have found, is the timer on the alarm clock. We?ve all�separately�found that we began setting the timer as a way to manage our children?s game time on portable devices. It is simple, easy and you can engage the children in setting the alarm type. It develops a clear sense of boundaries and rather than just saying ?times up? and preparing for the argument. Children seem to argue less.
This little app called Game Time Limit takes it one step further and I have found it useful, as my older boy has begun to secret himself away so that when the alarm goes off to end his time he can turn it off quickly and keep playing ? or even in some instances reset it?so when he is asked to turn it off he can point to the timer and claim that it has not finished. Game Time Limit simply lets you set the timer, and when it finishes locks the phone and can only be opened by a passcode that has been set by the parent.
So, whether it is screentime you are worried about ? or just getting your handheld device back at some stage ? apps like this certainly play a role.
Note: GeekDad�received�a review copy of the app mentioned in this article.

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GeekDad Puzzle Of The Week Solution: Fan Club Treasurer

Image by popculturegeek; used under Creative Commons
This weeks puzzle was all about money being spent by 4 groups of fans spending money at a Con. Here it is for old times sake:
We all know how easy it is to spend money in the dealers room at any Con. Well, at a recent Sci-fi Con four groups of fans decided to pool their money and buy awesome stuff for their hangout. Added together the four groups spent $931 total.
There were 25 Trekkies, 20 Star Wars Fans, 18 Bablyon 5 Fans and 12 Farscape Fans
5 Trekkies spent as much as 4 Star Wars Fans
12 Star Wars fans spent as much as 9 Babylon 5 Fans
6 Babylon 5 Fans spent as much as 8 Farscape Fans
This week Eric Ryan with the help of his good friend Reason, and the willing assistance of his passing acquaintance Math (his words not mine) figured out that:
The Trekkies spent $245
The Star Wars Fans spent $245
The Babylon 5 fans spent $294
The Farscape fans spent $147
That answer and the cooperation of a Random Number generator makes Eric this weeks winner of the $50.00 ThinkGeek gift certificate.
Here?s the solution:
T = Total spent by Trekkies
S = Total spent by Star Wars fans
B = Total spent by Babylon 5 fans
F = Total spent by Farscape fans
(1) T + S + B + F = 931
If we let:
t = average amount spent by 1 Trekkie
s = average amount spent by 1 Star Wars fans
b = average amount spent by 1 Babylon 5 fans
f = average amount spent by 1 Farscape fan
From Clue 1 above
T = 25t
S = 20s
B = 18b
F = 12f
(1) becomes
25t + 20s + + 18b + 12f = 931
Now we can use the rearrange the rest of the clues as follows:
(2) 5t = 4s
(2) s = 5/4(t)
(3) 12s = 9b
(3) b = 12/9(s)
From (2)
(3) b = (12/9)(5/4)(t)
(4) 6b = 8f
(4) f= 6/8(b)
From (3)
(4) f = (6/8)(12/9)(5/4)(t)
Now we can drop all that back into the earlier equations:
T = 25t
S = 20(5/4)(t)
B = 18(12/9)(5/4)(t)
F = 12(6/8)(12/9)(5/4)(t)
(1) becomes
25t + 20(5/4)(t) + 18(12/9)(5/4)(t) + 12(6/8)(12/9)(5/4)(t) = 931
95t = 931
t = 9.80
now plug the value of T into the above equations and you get
T = $245
S = $245
B = $294
F = $147
Total = 245 + 245 + 294 + 147 = 931
That was a long road and if your still with me then great! A quick shout out to Rosiland from Girls are Geeks who submitted a correct answer, but alas the random number generating deities did not smile upon her. It was great to see her in the inbox though !
Show up back here on Monday and see what the devious Dave Banks has in store for you. Until then rest your braincells, maybe take them to a spa for a day of pampering.

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102 Year-Old Lens on Canon 5D MkII

Timur Civan is a director of photography for movies, and a photographer. He?s also a tinkerer, and he got his hands on an old Wollensak 35mm F5.0 Cine-Velostigmat, a hand cranked movie-camera lens from 1908. You see it above, wedded to his Canon 5D MkII. But where did it come from?
Civan got a call from his friend, known mysteriously only as ?a Russian lens technician?:
He found in a box of random parts, hidden inside anther lens this gem. A circa 1908 (possibly earlier) 35mm lens. Still functioning, mostly brass, and not nearly as much dust or fungus as one would think after sitting in a box for over a hundred years. This lens is a piece of motion picture history, and at this point rare beyond words. So I say to him, ?Wow? what do you have in mind?? he smiles, and says, (in the thickest Russian accent you can imagine) ?I can make this fit EF you know??
The results are astonishing. This century-old hunk of glass and brass makes a great picture. There?s vignetting at the edges, a softness and a lack of biting contrast. There?s also a color-shift in the non-black-and-white images. In short, the lens adds all the tweaks you might do in post-processing to Holga-fy your pictures. Civan is planning on shooting some footage with the lens, too, which is its purpose after all, and promises to share the results on the Cinema 5D forums, where he posted his photographs.

But aside from the great pictures, and the wonderful story of the mysterious Russian, we can learn something from this tale. Camera-tech comes and goes, but photography is really just about light. That?s why you should buy the best lenses you can afford. They will probably last longer than you.
102 year old lens on a 5DmkII [Cinema 5D forums]

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Fingers-On: TabToolkit for iPad Has More Cowbell

If you play the guitar, and you have an iPad, you should buy TabToolkit. Short of having a teacher with you all the time, it?s probably the best way I have seen to learn new music.
Guitar Tab is a way of writing down music specifically for the guitar. It?s not as information-rich as standard musical notation, but it?s a lot easier to follow. At its core, TabToolkit will display tabs for you, just like they?d look on paper. But if you use Power Tab or Guitar Pro files, both designed to be read on by computer, then TabToolkit goes into overdrive.
Load in a song (from your computer or via the built-in web-browser) and you?ll see the tab along with musical notation, and below that there is a picture of a guitar?s fretboard and strings. Press play and things really get going. A line runs along the notation to show you where you are in the song, and red dots appear on the fretboard to show you where your fingers should be. Better still, the app actually plays the song thanks to a built-in multi-track synthesizer. That?s right, you get a whole band to play along with, only they never get tired and they never drink all your beer.
There are various controls and options. The best is the speed-dial: spin the wheel and you can slow the music down (or speed it up, should you really hate yourself). you can also choose which instrument you want to learn. Tabs default to the main guitar track, but you can choose to see any instrument for which a sequencer track has been included. You can also switch off the standard musical notation, change the size of the display, switch to left-handed mode (try that with printed tabs) and have a keyboard instead of a fretboard shown at the bottom.
There are some problems with this iPad version (launched in April ? there?s an older iPhone version). While you can tap-to-stop the music, doing so skips the ?playhead? to wherever you touch on-screen. Further, you need to hit the tiny play-button to resume. But that?s about it. As I said, if you?re learning the guitar, you owe it to yourself to spend $10 on this app. My favorite part? Take a look at the screenshot at the top: You can choose to have the metronome sound as a cow-bell. Just where might that be useful?
I played the guitar a lot when I was younger. Back then, there was no internet. Songs came in books, or on pieces of paper scribbled by friends. If something like TabToolkit had existed back then, I wouldn?t be such a terrible player today.
TabToolkit product page [Agile]
See Also:
iPad Sheet-Music Foot-Switch is a Real Page-Turner
Headstock Guitar Tuner Picks Up Vibes
Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Wooden Notebook Case: High-Class or Shop-Class?

Over at Gizmodo, Kat Hannaford has this to say about the kind of person who might by this wooden notebook case:
You know that eccentric uncle, who sits surrounded by leather-bound books in his study, drinking whisky? That?s how I imagine these laptop cases smell..
When I read this, my hair prickled on my neck. I am that eccentric uncle, and I sit in my ?study? surrounded by old books and dusty gadgets, sipping whisky. The synchronicities then pile up in a Jungian whirlwind: When I was in school, we made pencil-cases in shop-class (called ?woodwork? in dusty old 1970s England) that were just smaller versions of this heavy, over-protective laptop case. Plywood, front and back? Check. Varnish chosen to make the wood look as cheap as possible? Check. Leather-lined interior and rare-earth magnets to hold it closed?
Actually, no. We were on a budget, and I believe the only way I knew to make a magnet as strong as these was to wrap a wire around a nail and hook it up to a transformer (which I did do, and often). But those aren?t the only differences. The wooden pencil-boxes we made cost pocket-money. These boxes, just as ugly as mine, top out at a pocket-stripping $350 for the 17-incher. I obviously can?t afford that. All my spare cash goes on whisky.
MacBook Pro cases [Rainer Spehl via Kat Hannaford]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Read and Save Web Sites and PDFs with Zotero Everywhere

Zotero started out as a Firefox extension to save and manage web and PDF sources. It was included in part of the special ?campus edition? of Firefox, and is integrated into the new UberStudent build of Ubuntu Linux. Today, Dan Cohen from the Center for History and New Media announced Zotero Everywhere, a multi-pronged effort to bring its research management and social-network capabilities to every major browser and platform ? including mobile devices.
On Firefox, the Zotero extension already allows users to archive and store web documents and PDFs, organize and annotate collections, export citations and bibliographies, and sync and share their work across multiple devices or with multiple users through accounts on a central server. As Zotero Everywhere rolls out, the program will add the following:
A standalone Zotero application for Windows, Mac, and Linux;
An HTML 5 web application which will work on any device, including mobile;
Extension/toolbar support for Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer on all of those platforms (which will in turn sync with user?s Zotero accounts and the standalone Zotero app);
Bookmarklets for any browser (including Opera, et al) to quickly save documents to a user?s Zotero account
An expansion of its API to encourage third-party developers to create standalone client apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.
Zotero was initially developed for academic researchers working with often-recalcitrant web sources, but after using it for four years (it feels like longer!) in a variety of contexts, I can tell you that it?s a boon to anyone doing any kind of guided searches on the web: students, journalists, librarians, bloggers, curators, etc, or anyone who wants to keep an archives of web pages as they exist or who hates wrangling lots of PDF documents.
Think of it as a virtual file-cabinet, or collection of index cards. But it?s smarter than that. Its social and sharing features, which often aren?t emphasized, are also very strong; it?s thoroughly possible that Zotero could emerge as a kind of backchannel social network for students and academics. (In small doses, it already is.) Zotero?s archival and metadata-extraction capabilities are top-notch ? as good or better than the many commercial PDF-organization applications that followed it.
There are plenty of services that will sync data across your devices, but very few that will actually give that data structure. I?ve been after the developers to graduate Zotero from Firefox-extension status for years; I?m particularly excited about the standalone application and ? especially, as more of us do more of our reading away from our computers ? the future of mobile development with Zotero.
The Zotero extension is downloadable now; the new standalone application for the desktop should be released ?very soon,? with other new features to follow. Everything released by Zotero is free.
Video screenshot tour of Zotero 1.5 via Zotero.org.
See Also:
Zotero Makes Writing Papers a Bit Less Painful
Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education
Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities ?
Viva Cyber Academia, man

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Rebuilding Bones Stronger and Faster with Titanium Foam

The new titanium foam better imitates the structure of natural bone. Image by Fraunhofer IFAM.
I have a half-dozen titanium plates in my right forearm. They connect a bone graft taken from my left leg to the upper part of my radius and to my wrist. This system isn?t perfect, but it does the job.
When my arm snapped, the lower half of my radius shot out my body; it couldn?t be found, let alone repaired. A full titanium rod would have been stiff, wouldn?t have bonded with the existing bone, and would have been harder to arrange muscles and tendons and nerves and blood vessels around as my arm was rebuilt. Solid metal just isn?t light, porous, malleable like bone. Using an existing bone, from my own body, with its own blood supply, was the surer path to giving my arm some functionality again. So orthopedic surgeons removed my fibula ? the thin, ?chicken-leg? bone next to the shin that isn?t necessary for walking or even running in humans ? and carved it up to make a replacement. Titanium keeps everything together, but it?s not doing most (hardly any) of the structural work.
In many cases, though, this isn?t an option: bone grafts from either the fibula or any other site are the wrong size, shape, or density to be used to strengthen or replace a fractured or missing bone. That?s why surgeons still use titanium rods. Solid metal isn?t as good as bone, but at least it?s as strong as bone.
But what if the titanium were actually structured like bone? Instead of a rod, a foam ? strong yet flexible, solid yet porous, composed of a metal alloy but otherwise as similar to bone as possible?
Fraunhofer, a German industrial and medical research firm, has actually created such a substance with their TiFoam project. The titanium foam has a complex internal structure that allows blood vessels and existing bone cells to grow into the foam, integrating them into its own matrix (and vice versa). This makes the foam particularly useful to repair damaged bones that are still partially intact, like the radius in my arm.
For constructing bone replacements or prosthetics, the Titanium foam serves a slightly different function; it become more or less dense as the weight-bearing requirements of the substitute bone demand ? meaning, for instance, that a fingertip bone doesn?t need to be as heavy per cubic inch as a femur.
Finally, titanium foam allows for stress to be replaced on the repaired bone immediately. In fact, it requires it: only load-bearing stress can trigger the proper density formation of the graft and integration of the existing bone with the foam, fostering faster and more substantive healing.
On this project, Fraunhofer worked with researchers at the technical university of Dresden, and medical manufacturers InnoTERE; InnoTERE had already announced that they are beginning to develop and produce TiFoam-based bone implants.
See Also:
Pyramids, Nanowires Show Two Futures for Artificial Skin
Viruses Might Help Make Better Batteries
Dell Streak Is Perfect For A Doctor's Lab Coat
Forgotten Drug Helps Stem Cells Repair Bone Marrow

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The Six-Foot-Tall Sixty-Second History of the Microwave Oven

My childhood was remarkably low-tech for an American kid growing up in the 1980s. I didn?t have cable TV or a computer until I went to college (1997), and didn?t play video games outside of an arcade until we got a NES in 1990. So I always thought microwave ovens came into existence in 1988, when my family got one. In fact, they?d already been in commercial production for more than 40 years.
Stacy Conradt at Mental Floss gives an appropriately accelerated history of what she calls ?the Not-so-microwave?:
The first oven intended for commercial sale in 1947 was almost six feet tall, tipped the scale at 750 pounds and cost $5,000 in 1947 dollars. The second version, produced in 1954, was better but still needed work: it gobbled electricity and cost $2,000? $3,000, at a time when the average cost of a new car was about $1,700? Regular households didn?t care much about microwaves until 1967, when a relatively low-energy model costing just $500 came out.
You ever wonder how microwave ovens work? It?s just slightly more complicated than this, but basically microwaves (which are like radio waves, but with a frequency closer to the infrared spectrum) pass over food, creating a weak alternating electromagnetic field. Water molecules ? which are basically in everything we eat ? also have a weak electromagnetic charge, and they all realign themselves to match the polarity of the microwave radiation ? kind of like passing a household magnet over a pile of iron filings. When the water molecules move, the temperature raises (because molecular motion is all temperature is). Get those molecules moving fast enough and long enough, and baby, you?ve got a stew going.*
*I know, it?s the second time I?ve used this Arrested Development reference in as many weeks. It just feels right.
See Also:
Desktop Microwave Minimizes Calorie Loss
Panasonic NN-SD688S Microwave Inverter Oven
In the Kitchen with Roger Ebert & A Rice Cooker
Here Lies Food Processor, Kitchen's Once and Future King
Wired Makeovers: Upgrade Your Workspaces

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Three words: Boba. Fett. Backpack.

Okay, five words: Boba. Fett. Plush. Rocket. Backpack.
ThinkGeek has already sold you a pair of Lightsaber chopsticks, and you bought the adorable Tauntaun sleeping bag for your kid. But think ahead now, to when your son first goes off to school. Where will a geek?s offspring carry his lunch? How will he wear his (father?s) nerd-colors with pride? You need to get him this Boba Fett Backpack, which ? at $50 ? is the most awesome yet overpriced bag you could find.
The rocket-shaped pockets on either side are the perfect size and shape for storing cans of soda (and if you ship junior off to school with a pack of Mentos, too, he might actually be able to fire himself off into a convenient nearby Sarlacc pit. Available now, helmet (sadly) not included.
Boba Fett Plush Rocket Backpack [ThinkGeek]
See Also:
'Joke' Tauntaun Sleeping Bag Approved By Lucasfilm
Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
Lightsaber Chopsticks
Star Trek Fish Emblem for True Believers
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Frio Coldshoe Is a Hot, Handy Holder for Strobists

If you spent $500 on a Nikon SB900 Speedlight, you?ll remember how happy you were with this great flash. You?ll then remember the rage, followed by disbelief, when you discovered that it wouldn?t fit any of your existing lighting gear thanks to the stupid fat foot that Nikon put on it, a hot-shoe that would make a midget tall enough to reach the top-shelf magazines. This forced you to use the included tripod adapter, which Nikon decided to make with a fast-stripping plastic tripod thread. Plastic. On a $500 flash.
Luckily, someone out there is thinking straight and, starting next month, you?ll be able to buy the Frio Coldshoe, a miraculous widget that will fit any flash, including the club-footed SB900, and mount it safely on any light-stand or tripod.
We like it for a few reasons. First, it is secure. A springy tab automatically clicks shut when you slide in a flash (or mic, or LED-panel) and needs to be pressed to release. There is also a hole in just the right place for Canon and Nikon locking pins to slide in. Second, the tripod-mount is metal, which means it?ll last. And third, it?s tiny, way smaller than Nikon?s dumb adapter.
The Frio comes from Orbis, the ring-flash adapter people, and exists currently only on the teaser site, not yet on sale. My guess is that it will be cheap enough to buy a handful and just leave them on every one of your strobes.
Frio product page [Frio/Orbis via the Strobist]
See Also:
Nikon's Flashy New SB700 Speedlight
Hands-On With The Orbis Ring Flash Adapter
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Frio Coldshoe Is a Hot, Handy Holder for Strobists

If you spent $500 on a Nikon SB900 Speedlight, you?ll remember how happy you were with this great flash. You?ll then remember the rage, followed by disbelief, when you discovered that it wouldn?t fit any of your existing lighting gear thanks to the stupid fat foot that Nikon put on it, a hot-shoe that would make a midget tall enough to reach the top-shelf magazines. This forced you to use the included tripod adapter, which Nikon decided to make with a fast-stripping plastic tripod thread. Plastic. On a $500 flash.
Luckily, someone out there is thinking straight and, starting next month, you?ll be able to buy the Frio Coldshoe, a miraculous widget that will fit any flash, including the club-footed SB900, and mount it safely on any light-stand or tripod.
We like it for a few reasons. First, it is secure. A springy tab automatically clicks shut when you slide in a flash (or mic, or LED-panel) and needs to be pressed to release. There is also a hole in just the right place for Canon and Nikon locking pins to slide in. Second, the tripod-mount is metal, which means it?ll last. And third, it?s tiny, way smaller than Nikon?s dumb adapter.
The Frio comes from Orbis, the ring-flash adapter people, and exists currently only on the teaser site, not yet on sale. My guess is that it will be cheap enough to buy a handful and just leave them on every one of your strobes.
Frio product page [Frio/Orbis via the Strobist]
See Also:
Nikon's Flashy New SB700 Speedlight
Hands-On With The Orbis Ring Flash Adapter
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Stephen Fry and Our Transmedia Reading Future

Actor/comedian/intellectual/newspaper columnist/quiz-show host/techno-bibliophile Stephen Fry?s new autobiography The Fry Chronicles is available in several different editions: hardcover, paperback, and Kindle, naturally, but also an enhanced book in Apple?s iBooks store and most intriguingly, an interactive application called myFry for iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad.
This signals something new. The mere fact of bundling a book as an application is old hat; there was a time, after all, before the Kindle and iBooks apps, when most apps for the iPhone were books. As the video above shows, though, myFry provides both the metadata and interface necessary to read the book nonlinearly ? a synthesis of the familiar (flipping through the pages, jumping to any point one likes, not just a chapter head) and the new (sorting data by content tags rather than chapter titles or page numbers; following associative rather than sequential threads).
Alas, myFry is currently not available in the US; in the UK, it costs about 8 pounds, or about $12.50. Also, it?s not currently a universal application, meaning that iPhone and iPad users would have to purchase the application separately for each device.
As for other e-book formats, the iBook version of The Fry Chronicles is organized in the familiar manner, but enhanced with video clips, mostly of the author himself, hyperlinks, and other multimedia. The Kindle e-book, like the print versions, consist of the familiar rows of text + occasional images book-readers have come to know and love for ages.
In the video below, Fry justifies his (and his publisher Penguin?s) approach to e-publishing, and articulates his vision of the future of books: ?I think the point is not why I?ve done this, but really why anybody wouldn?t do it now.?


Fry?s embrace of electronic reading is significant in no small part because of the depth of his knowledge of the history of print. In 2008 he made and starred in a BBC documentary on Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press, titled The Machine That Made Us. He?s also a novelist, a journalist, and a celebrated narrator of audiobooks. There are few public figures with the kind of total media experience that he has, both as a performer and thinker.
The myFry application does have its critics. Gavin C. Pugh, a writer for NextRead and FutureBook, complains:
I like a book to look like a book. I like the text to be formatted paragraphs that are indented unless you need to show a scene-break. If they are formatted like a webpage as Penguin have chosen to do here it changes the flow, at least for me. I also like to see each page turn.
Instead each section is presented as a webpage not only in formatting but in scrolling. And it does spoil the flow. Readers tend to scan webpages but absorb books (or things that look like books). How do I know the difference? I downloaded the sample Kindle and iBook versions. I didn?t feel any connection with app but when I started reading the Kindle version my finger ended up hovering over ?buy? option
The Kindle version, too, can be read on any device that supports the Kindle app; Pugh appreciates the multimedia enhancements of the iBook version, but laments that it?s limited to iDevices. Chris Matthews at TeleRead adds that the myFry app ?does seem a bit expensive for what you get.?
It?s no longer only print aficionados who are resisting the next generation of e-books; experienced digital readers are protesting too, in the name of price, cross-platform portability, and book-specific standards. Meanwhile, other digital readers are waiting for something new; a book designed specifically not only for digital reading but for their device, that takes advantage of all of its strengths to present an innovative reading experience.
I see one potential solution to this impasse: transmedia bundling.
By transmedia, in this instance, I mean simply that different or derivative versions of the same object exist in different media formats. In this case, it?s printed books, audiobooks, enhanced and plain-vanilla e-books, and software applications. It could also include web sites, video games, posters, licensed merchandise, and so forth.
The movie industry has been extremely savvy about bundling its transmedia products ? at least after films leave the theater. You can buy a deluxe edition of a film and receive a DVD, a Blu-ray disc, a booklet, an interactive game, a digital file of the film for your computer or media player, and other accessories, for a single price, usually not significantly more than if you had purchased just the DVD.
The book publishing industry hasn?t followed their lead. Instead, every product is treated discretely, released along different production schedules. Moreover, the industry has generally assumed that every e-book sold is a print sale lost ? that the few readers interested in reading a book in both a print and electronic version will gladly pay full-price for both.
Now, however, we?re at the point where iBooks, iPad, and Kindle are not offering different scans of the same book, but genuinely different products ? each of which may appeal to different readers, but also to the same reader differently depending on context.
The devices ? especially dedicated e-readers ? have also reached the point where it?s not uncommon for users to have a personal computer, a tablet, an e-reader, a smartphone, and a print library. But there is no way, short of purchasing a book and scanning it yourself, to read the same book in even a handful of those distinct contexts without spending a fortune.
Suppose instead that Penguin offered a deluxe hardcover version of Fry?s book for $35. Or even $50. (Amazon UK is currently selling the hardcover for 9 pounds, or about $14.) With this, you would get:
A handsome slipcover;
A finely printed book;
An audiobook, on either CD or mp3;
An e-book, in the format of your choice;
A software application, for the OS (mobile or otherwise) of your choice;
A commemorative flag, T-shirt, poster, and/or pin.
In other words, instead of punishing your transmedia collectors, reward and embrace them. Let bibliophiles strive to outdo one another with the audacity of cinephiles. Make the release of a new book an event.
Ripping compact discs provided a natural way to enjoy music anywhere; DVDs quickly did the same for movies. Now even Blu-ray?s DRM days are dwindling. In all of these cases, the industry lagged and fretted about privacy while users found and shared solutions on their own.
That?s already beginning with books. This won?t be the end.
See Also:
Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books
E-Books Are Still Waiting for Their Avant-Garde
Exclusive: The Sounds of Star Wars Book ? Video ? Wired
Make Books 'Pop' With New Augmented Reality Tech
Q&A: William Gibson discusses Spook Country and Interactive ?

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GeekDad Puzzle Of The Week Solution: Are You Ready For Some Hand-Egg?

Puzzle:
Chalk it up to apathy or a busy weekend (we spent a lot of time building a compressed air rocket), but I didn?t realize until pretty late in the afternoon on Sunday that this was the first weekend of the NFL season. So, with a nod to all of you fantasy football geeks out there, this puzzle?s for you. Simply figure out the phrase in the image above. If you need a hint, check out my posts from last week.
Solution:
OK, this week?s puzzle was very easy. I felt bad because some of the recent puzzles were pretty tough. So consider this a little palette cleanser. The answer is a not so subtle nod to the Wizard of Oz and the NFL. The complete phrase is:
Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!
Congratulations to Charlie White, whose answer was randomly selected as this week?s winner. Charlie wins a $50 gift certificate from the flying monkeys over at ThinkGeek. And just because you are attractive and intelligent GeekDad readers, you can get $10 off any order of $40 or more at ThinkGeek by using the coupon code GEEKDAD87UP.
Be sure to check back on Monday when the quarterback of quizzes, Dave Giancaspro, will be back with a first-string puzzle to blitz your brain. Thanks to everyone who sent in a solution for this week?s puzzle!
Helmet images: National Football League

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Come Get Some Army of Darkness ? on the iPhone

Image via Wikipedia

No, it?s not just the movie. Nor is it the (fun, but limited) soundboard available now. No, someone is making an Army of Darkness game for the iPhone:
The movie might not seem like a good fit for touchscreen platforms, but Backflip told Touch Arcade the game will rely heavily on castle-defense mechanics. Players will use their boomstick and chainsaw to protect the Necronomicon from hordes of nasty Deadites. Backflip promises that all of Campbell?s best quotes will pop up in the game?s audio.
I?ll be downloading that faster than you can say ?Klaatu barada necktie!?
Read the full article here at Be the Gamer.

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Look up in the Sky! The Moon! Jupiter!

Photo: Chuck Lawton. Shot with a Canon T1i and a Celestron Celestar 8.
There is a lot to appreciate in the night?s sky, and if you?ve ever wanted to take a closer look, tonight offers a fantastic opportunity.
First is International Observe the Moon Night sponsored by various groups affiliated with NASA. View the moon through a telescope at one of thousands of events planned in communities all over the world. Not only are traditional observatories and museums involved, this is a great opportunity to check out your local astronomy club and meet many passionate amateur astronomers who live in your community. If you like what you see, many clubs offer classes and telescopes to rent so you can make your first outing one of many to come. Visit observethemoonnight.org to see what events are happening in your area.
Second, on September 21st, Jupiter will be closest to Earth than at any time since 1963. Miss this and you?ll have to wait another 12 years for it to be closer. What does that mean? Jupiter will be incredibly bright in the night?s sky. And because it?s at opposition, meaning Jupiter is opposite the sun in the sky, it will be visible from dusk until dawn. Observing Jupiter through a telescope should yield a clearer and brighter viewing than other nights.
Hope you have clear skies in your neighborhood tonight!

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Espresso and GPS Enliven Our European Road Tour

Playing the Eigenharp, while driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta.
Editor?s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He?s filing occasional reports from the road.
Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.
The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.
Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.
But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.

The SPOT tracker uses GPS and satellite signals to let you track our location wherever we go.
The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot?s 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.
Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don?t ask.) I?d hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.
Welsh is a revived language, and it?s thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z?s, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.
In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.
Iridium satellite phone
Camping Gaz car cool box
Eigenharp computer instrument
Handpresso pump action espresso maker
Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
European TomTom app for the iPhone
Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad
2 Lifeventure first aid kits
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Threads for Trekkies: ?Traditional Greeting? Hoodie

My wife already got me the Tron Lightcycle hoodie for my birthday this year, but if I needed another hoodie this one would be high on my list. The ?Traditional Greeting? hoodie is such a simple-yet-brilliant idea it?s surprising nobody?s done it before. The big hand printed on the front is aligned so that unzipping it halfway changes it from our Earthling traditional greeting (a wave) to the Vulcan traditional greeting. It?s now available on Threadless for $40.
Thanks to Julia S. for the tip!

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Teaching Kids Computers, Part 2

Hippocampus by Elena Knudsen
After teaching my kids some fundamentals about computer architecture and the file system, I was able to introduce them to my favorite applications. I?ll describe them briefly here and write some other posts about how my kids have used them.
All of these applications are free to download, good for cheapo, ahem, cost-conscious geek dads like me. Furthermore, all of these applications run on Windows and OS X.
iTunes
iTunes was one of the first applications we explored, mostly because my daughter wanted to move some music from CDs to her mobile phone. It?s very useful for ripping CDs and managing music, but we had to learn two non-obvious pieces of information.
First, we changed a setting so that CDs are ripped into MP3 files instead of AAC. On the Windows version of iTunes, choose Edit > Preferences? from the menu. On the General tab, click Import Settings?, then select MP3 Encoder from the list. This means that whenever you rip a CD, the songs are stored as MP3 files. It?s possible to generate MP3 files from AAC using iTunes, and it isn?t that hard, but I find it?s easier to just import to MP3 in the first place.
The second crucial piece of information is where iTunes actually places its files. We needed to find this so that we could copy files to my daughter?s cell phone. To find out where the files are, choose Edit > Preferences? from the menu. Click on the Advanced tab and you?ll see the location that iTunes is using for its files.
OpenOffice
This is a no-brainer. OpenOffice is a freely available office suite, which includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a drawing program, and a presentation program. With my kids, I concentrated on the draw program and the word processor.
One of the important lessons was the difference between a drawing program, like the one in OpenOffice, and a paint program or image editor. I was able to illustrate this with a few simple examples. For example, for cartoon-style pictures, it?s much easier to change the speech balloon and the text in a drawing program, rather than in a paint program.
GIMP
My kids had been using the Windows XP accessory Paint pretty extensively. I showed them GIMP as a more capable alternative. Honestly, I don?t know too many details of GIMP myself, but we spent one lesson cutting and pasting photos of my kids, supermarket tabloid style. I pasted my son into a Dancing with the Stars photograph, my daughter next to the Eiffel tower, and so forth. We talked about using ?Photoshop? as a verb. They really liked this lesson. My daughter created the hippocampus that accompanies this article.
One important concept is layers. We spent some time exploring this, and I showed the kids as much as I knew about working with different layers in an image.
Audacity
I wanted my kids to be able to manipulate audio in the same way they could manipulate images using GIMP. Audacity is an excellent solution. I showed them basic cutting, pasting, and transformations such as reversing, reverberation, amplifying, and pitch-shifting.
Summary
All told, teaching the fundamentals of these four applications took up approximately four lessons, each 45-60 minutes. Now my kids have varying levels of proficiency, some of which surpass my expertise, and have created some very interesting results. In coming posts, I?ll describe some of their projects.
The only thing missing from this mix is video editing software. If my kids had a Mac, we?d be all over iMovie, but they have a Windows 7 machine. I?ve got no good way to move our Flip videos into Windows Movie Maker. If any geekdads out there can recommend freely available video editing software with quality similar to GIMP or Audacity (my searches have come up empty), I?d love to hear about it.

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Upgrading a Boomer Dad: Video Camera

In case you missed the previous post concerning my quest to upgrade my non-geek dad, here is a summary. My dad is a member of the Baby Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964. He has worked at the same company for forty-plus years, and is now retiring. Now that he will be free to explore other interests, he needs a bit of updating to the modern times. His employment provided him a computer and a cell phone, if you want to call them that. The computer was a monochrome Tandy, just to give you an idea of its age; and the cell phone predated Cingular as a company. It is now my goal to get him up to date with technology.
The next item in this cavalcade of technology has been around for quite a while, the Flip video camera. I actually own a Sony Handycam, which is what we have taken on every vacation and been used to film every birthday for the past five years. However, since we were having a party that I needed to be involved in, I needed something that was less intrusive. A friend of mine who went to Comic-Con this year showed me excellent footage that he shot with his Flip, so I asked if I could borrow it.
What a difference! First thing I noticed was that it was light, but not light in a cheap-feeling way. Second feature I noticed was the lack of buttons. This full feature camera has one button in the middle of a d-pad and two other small buttons. The one large button in the d-pad is pressed for record and stop, which is what you really need a video camera for. Honestly, everything else is secondary. Video editing, which can be done on the Flip is usually done on the computer later, so why does that need to be in the way of shooting?
After I collected all my footage from our party, I then inserted the built in USB connector to my PC. The Flip then took over installing the necessary software to transfer footage and edit. I own Adobe Premier but I found that the Flip?s installed software was sufficient to edit the footage and make it internet ready.
My Boomer Dad travels extensively and before now has never had the ability to film any of his trips. Sure he has a digital camera that he takes pictures with, but nothing brings back memories like video. The Flip is one video camera that I know he could use and would enjoy because of the very features I listed above. It is so fun to use, my wife wants one for herself? I wonder if there is a bulk discount?
Disclaimer: No consideration was given for this post. This is just me telling readers about some items that I have found helpful to those who are not as technically inclined as some. Your mileage may vary. All photos are from the Flip website.

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Espresso and GPS Enliven Our European Road Tour

Playing the Eigenharp, while driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta.
Editor?s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He?s filing occasional reports from the road.
Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.
The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.
Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.
But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.

The SPOT tracker uses GPS and satellite signals to let you track our location wherever we go.
The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot?s 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.
Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don?t ask.) I?d hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.
Welsh is a revived language, and it?s thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z?s, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.
In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.
Iridium satellite phone
Camping Gaz car cool box
Eigenharp computer instrument
Handpresso pump action espresso maker
Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
European TomTom app for the iPhone
Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad
2 Lifeventure first aid kits
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Skyhook Sues Google, Says Android Isn?t So Open After All

Skyhook SpotRank, from Skyhookwireless.com
It?s well-known that telecoms selling Android devices are disabling built-in services and loading the machines up with carrier-approved bloatware. A new lawsuit alleges that Google itself is doing the same thing with their own software services.
Skyhook Wireless ? the company that innovated geolocation services using radio signals from cellphone towers in lieu of GPS ? has filed patent-infringement and unfair trade practices complaints against Google, which has its own competing location service bundled within Android OS. According to Skyhook?s complaint:
On information and belief, Google has notified OEMs that they will need to use Google Location Service, either as a condition of the Android OS-OEM contract or as a condition of the Google Apps contract between Google and each OEM. Though Google claims the Android OS is open source, by requiring OEMs to use Google Location Service, an application that is inextricably bundled with the OS level framework, Google is effectively creating a closed system with respect to location positioning. Google?s manipulation suggests that the true purpose of Android is, or has become, to ensure that ?no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other?, unless it is Google.
In other words, Google is leveraging its OS market share to push its own affiliated products and snuff out competitors ? kind of like Microsoft did with Internet Explorer on Windows 15 years ago. Yikes.
PDF: Skyhook-Google Complaint and Jury Demand [Daring Fireball]Then Welcome to Android [Daring Fireball]
See Also:
I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle
The Wi-Fi iPad's Dealbreaker: No GPS
Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones
Google: 200000 Android Phones Sold Every Day

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How to Turn the iPod Nano Into a Wristwatch

Admit it: When you saw the puny touchscreen iPod Nano you thought, ?That could make a cool watch.? Accessory makers thought so, too, and a handful of them are already selling fancy straps to turn your iPod Nano into a watch. The truth is you don?t really need to waste money on any of them, because you can do it yourself in two steps.
Really all you need is any fabric strap. The iPod Nano has a built-in clip on the back so you can just clip it on to the center of any thin strap. It?s a sturdy clip, too, so unless you go skydiving or regularly get in bar fights, it shouldn?t wiggle around much.
Check out our photos below to see how I converted my military watch (with a NATO watch band, which you can get for about $10) into an ?iWatch? in two easy steps.





Now the question is, when will we get FaceTime on a Nano? Then we?d really have that dream Dick Tracy or Jetsons watch.
See Also:
$100 DIY Shelter Could Help Homeless Haitians
The $20 DIY Book Scanner
Why Wristwatches Are Still Worth Watching
Rock Out With Your Clock Out: We Test Atomic Watches
Tiny Clip-On Timepieces Turn Anything Into a Watch
Photos: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

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Stop-Motion Animators Use iPad to Paint With Light

In this short film, iPads create three-dimensional images out of light, using long-exposure photography and stop-motion animation.
The resulting animations are astonishingly versatile and beautiful. They include abstract alphabetic and geometric figures, but also dancing robots, blocky automata, and diffuse molecular effects.
The filmmakers also make terrific use of their landscape; some of the light figures are photographed reflected on or seen through surface. The ghostly city lights and shadowy iPad ?handlers? are also part of the film, and surprisingly moving.
The first half of the video above describes the process used to produce it, which Jack Schultz from design consultancy Berg compares to a virtual CAT scan. The filmmakers first created a software template that plots 3-D models and generates 2-D stills. They then replay those stills on the iPad in sequence. Helpers hold the iPad and move it through space, so the stills assemble themselves in space as if the iPad were ?extruding? the 3-D object. Long-exposure photography stitches everything together.
The film was made by Berg on behalf of creative communications giant Dentsu. Dentsu?s London agency asked: ?What might a magical version of the future of media look like?? Berg responded with this film.
Dentsu?s Beeker Northam writes that the project grew out of the meaning of each of the three words, ?Making,? ?Future,? and ?Magic?:
?Making?, with its emphasis on craftsmanship, understanding of materials and media, and collaboration;
?Future?, meaning something not seen before, something new and unexpected (not so much sci-fi, as near-future);
and ?Magic? ? surprising, culturally powerful, unusual, capable of delighting.

This is the first of two collaborations between Berg and Dentsu. I don?t know what these film costs or how long they took to program and photograph, but I see tremendous potential here. Light is the new clay.
Making Future Magic: light painting with the iPad [Berg London]Light Painting Video ?Making Future Magic? Is Made of 3-D and iPad Genius [Switched]
See Also:
Patina and use-wear by BERG
The City is A Battlesuit For Surviving the Future
Wired 14.03: How Digital Animation Conquered Hollywood
Equation: Quantifying Light = Great 3-D Animation
In Praise of Ralph Bakshi, Animation Pioneer
Big Bang Big Boom: Stop Motion Animation at Its Finest

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Dell?s Convertible Duo Tablet Flips its Lid

Dell?s latest innovation is this clever, transforming tablet/netbook: the Inspiron Duo. Instead of a complicated hinge, the screen flips on an axis inside its own bezel, swapping from regular clamshell laptop to keyboard-hiding touch-screen.
At heart, it?s a netbook, with a ten-inch screen and an Atom N550 CPU running Windows 7 Premium. And there, in that last point, is the problem. Windows 7 makes a great netbook OS, but it also makes a terrible tablet OS. Yes, it technically has built-in support for touch-screens but unless you have a finger the size and shape of a mouse pointer you?ll get frustrated, fast.
On the other hand, if you?re just watching movies or reading the internet then even Windows can?t ruin the tablet form-factor for you. There?s no word from Dell on price or availability, but the fact that it?s called the Inspiron Duo and that it already has a nice product shot makes me think it should be ready to buy pretty soon.
Dell?s Atom-powered Inspiron Duo: 10-inch netbook [Engadget]
See Also:
Dell's Streak Tablet Is Priced Like a Phone
Dell's Tablet Aims to Stick It to Apple's iPad
Hands On: Dell 'Streak' Tablet Feels Like Supersized Phone ?
Dell Tablet To Debut on AT&T
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Tweet of the Day: The Real Battle for Mobile

Tensions seem to rise between Apple and Google every time they launch a phone or acquire a new media company, but the real battle is happening in a wonkier arena: telecom.
That?s what Elia Freedman, CEO of Infinity Softworks, argues in his intriguing piece ?Fighting the Wrong Fight,? featured in today?s Tweet of the Day.�Freedman tweeted: ?This is critical. We?ve been distracted by Apple v. Google. But that?s not the real fight, one for the soul of mobile.?

In his post, Freedman enumerates examples illustrating that the experience you get on your phone ultimately boils down to what carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile want you to have. He?s right.

Ever wonder why the iPhone doesn?t have free tethering? Or why some Android devices are shipping with bloatware? These were decisions imposed by carriers, who are fighting to regain control of their industry in the aftermath of the iPhone revolution.
As Wired?s Fred Vogelstein originally reported in his bombshell 2008 piece ?How the iPhone blew up the wireless industry,? Steve Jobs transformed the wireless game by convincing AT&T to carry Apple?s phone without even seeing it. That sly move resulted in a phone that Apple was able to design for customers to enjoy instead of carriers. After the iPhone became a blockbuster hit, the rest of the wireless industry was forced to offer competitive products tailored to a rich customer experience.
However, carriers didn?t simply wuss out. As Vogelstein revealed in a followup piece, the relationship between Apple and AT&T has since turned dysfunctional. In one incident, Apple was pushing for AT&T to include tethering as a free service as part of its unlimited data plan, but AT&T wouldn?t allow it without incurring a fee. The two companies were arguing over this matter in late 2008, and only recently did tethering finally become available for iPhone customers ? for an additional monthly cost, just like AT&T wanted.
And as large and influential as Google may be, the search giant appears to have ceded control to carriers in light of its recent joint proposal with Verizon regarding net neutrality (as Wired.com?s Ryan Singel summarizes poignantly in his piece ?Why Google became a carrier-humping, net neutrality surrender monkey?).
Now is indeed a time for concern. While consumer tech companies appear to be the gods delivering our products, it?s the carrier overlords who possess the keys to the broadband fueling our mobile experiences. That?s a tough position for even Google and Apple to wrestle with.
Seen any especially awesome tweets you?d like us to feature? Share them with Gadget Lab by Twitter.
See Also:
AT&T Plans 5 Android Smartphones in 2010
TV ?Anywhere?: AT&T Relents on iPhone 3G Slingbox
How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web
AT&T?s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services
Cap My iPhone? Try This Instead, AT&T
In Escalating War Against Verizon, AT&T Is Getting Tone Deaf ? and ?
Image by Lore Sjoberg

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Canon G12 With HD Video Now Official

You may remember that last month, Canon?s flagship G12 compact camera was leaked in an accidentally published CNET review. Now, over three weeks later, the same camera is officially official.
One of the annoying things about Canon is the artificial hobbling of features to make its cameras fit into the product line hierarchy. The cameras all use the same processing chips (currently the DIGIC 4), but only have a subset of features switched on. All manufacturers do this, but the G-series has been a particularly bad example: After the G9, released back in 2007, Canon switched off hi-def video in its top-of-the-range compact. Why? Nobody knows.
Now it?s back, and the G12 will shoot 720p video at 24fps. The camera keeps its sensor at a sensible ten megapixels and will shoot up to ISO3200. The rear 2.8-inch LCD has a rather pedestrian 461,000 dots, then optical zoom runs from 28mm to 140mm (35mm equivalent) and the aperture ranges from a fairly wide ?2.8 to ?4.5.
Mercifully, Canon?s other additions are also useful to the serious photographer. Instead of a slew of gimmicky extras (cough Samsung NX100 cough), Canon has added an EOS SLR-style front control dial, hybrid image-stabilization (which works in multiple planes) and multiple aspect-ratios, so you can shoot wide-screen or square pictures in-camera. These come in addition to the already popular manual control knobs.
The G12 is a very solid (literally) update to the G11, although now it has some serious competition in the form of Nikon?s almost identical P7000. That is, of course, great for us buyers. The G12 costs $500.
G12 product page [Canon]
See Also:
Nikon's Stages Compact Comeback with Flash-Friendly P7000
Canon G12: G-Series Regains High-Def Video at Last
Leaked Canon G11 Specs Show Five Megapixels Less Than G10
Canon G10: More Pixels, More Processor, More Dials
Review: Canon Powershot G9 ? Small. Powerful. Perfect.
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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