Yesterday Adobe released their Adobe Media Player (AMP).
It has a nice iTunes Store feel to it, but without having to buy anything - TV shows, podcasts, movie shorts, all free and all playing smoothly. I recommend you download it (it’s free!).
Also, this is perhaps the smoothest-running 1.0 version of anything I’ve ever used (apparently bug-free).
Suck it, Windows Media Player!
(via James King, Adobe’s PDF Architect)
2006: As some of you may remember, Chevy trucks thought they’d create a cyber-hip-20-somethings ad campaign where you could make your own Chevy Tahoe commercial . . . and it backfired in a major way.
2008: BMW has decided to walk into the punch. Get a load of BMW’s cyber-virtual-interweb-hipster ad campaign for their new BMW 1 Series: draw on their car with Facebook Graffiti, for a chance to win mediocre prizes.
And the trolls have obliged.
I planned on submitting this fine Photoshop project below, until I discovered that you have to use stupid Facebook Graffiti to do all of your artwork. Dammit!
Feast your ears on this: Muxtape.
And this: my Muxtape demo.
The up sides to Muxtape:
• You can make a virtual mixtape, to let everyone know that you have better musical taste than they do.
• It’s free.
• It is elegantly simple, super-user-friendly, and setting up an account is free of ass-pain.
The down sides:
• To create a Muxtape, uploaded music must be in mp3 format.
• I miss putting stickers and homemade artwork all over mixtape cassettes.
• If you were born after 1980, you won’t truly understand the nostalgia of mixtapes.
Bonus Round: The book “Mix Tape” by Thurston Moore.
(photo from René Rondeau)
Earlier this month, researcher/historian David Giovannoni (at First Sounds) discovered the earliest recording of a human voice, from the archives of the French Academy of Sciences. According to records, this sound recording was made by inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 - 17 years before Thomas Edison. The recording was made on Scott de Martinville’s “phonautograph” which records sound onto a carbon (smoke)-blackened paper. Though his machine successfully recorded a human voice, Scott de Martinville had no means to play back the recording. This recording was scanned, processed, and converted into an audible clip at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
HERE IS THE AUDIO CLIP of Scott de Martinville’s recording - it is a 10 second passage from the French song “Au Clair de la Lune” (I also added a modern recording of the song for comparison).
(via ABC Science)
What’s the point of robots unless you can make them annoying?
The Yellow Drum Machine:
“Like a hyperactive 3 year old, the little Yellow Drum Machine Robot wanders around the house looking for objects to drum on.”
(via Notcot)
Once again, technology is put to good use: Atlanta bar owner Rufus Terrill has created the anti-vagabond “Bum Bot 2000.“
It has a 2,000,000 candlepower floodlight and a water cannon capable of 200 lbs of pressure. The object of this robot is to chase away vagrants, prostitutes, and pushers in his neighborhood. Many of Terrill’s targets are the “sort of people” drawn to a local emergency homeless shelter - he hopes to let them know they aren’t welcome to plague his public streets anymore. The camera feed on the Bum Bot 2000 is projected onto a big screen TV in Terrill’s bar, so patrons can watch prostitutes and hoboes get sprayed with water. This unstoppable security droid may have only one weakness, that hopefully the swarthy homeless will never discover: pushing it over.
Suggestions for a better name for this robot:
•Hobotron 2000
•The Roomba Wet T-Shirt Machine
•BumFighter X1
•Bigot-tron 4000
•The Hobo Soaker
•Go-Starve-Somewhere-Else-O-Matic
•The Hookernator
•Ho-Bot
•D!ckhead with a Watergun 9000
I want to invent “Drunkbot 3000″: it will regularly cover the floor of Terrill’s bar in vomit.
Linkety-link: L.A. Times
(via Susan)
This is the future of telephony, mobility, and computing– brace yourself:
Obviously this technology’s place in the mainstream market is a long way out, but theoretically a prototype already exists and is to be shared with the public. I say ‘theoretically,’ because the Nokia Morph is supposed to be at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art as part of the exhibit entitled Design and the Elastic Mind, but my sources tell me that the Morph was nowhere to be seen in this collection, nor did any of the MoMA staff have specific information about it, or why it wasn’t there. MoMA’s site still lists it as an exhibit, so what gives??
(Thanks to TJ for the link and all of this info)
Pretty sweet!
Via Drawn.ca
[A nice follow-up to last week's Honda del Sol X-Wing.]
Another awesome car mod:
the Subaru Outback Ghostbusters ‘Ecto 1′.
(via Notcot.org)
This is Jaimie.
He lives in a geodesic dome in the forest.
He likes building things.
He is currently building a giant 6-legged robot.
You can watch Jaimie’s progress on his YouTube page.
Go, Jaimie, Go!
Given that American currency is the most counterfeited in the world, the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing is in a constant race to keep ahead of forgery operations. The newest addition to the American wallet: the Purple Five.
It makes Lincoln look like he’s been holding his breath for a long time.
An amazing note: To provide a sample graphic for this post, I took a screenshot of (Condé Nast’s) Porfolio image of the new five. When I tried to open the screenshot in Photoshop CS, it recognized features of the image as currency (even though this software is 4 years old and this style of bill is brand new) and gave me this message:
“This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images. For more information, select the information button below for Internet-based information on restrictions for copying and distributing banknote images or go to www.rulesforuse.org.”
Wow. Well done.
The Honda del Sol meets the Star Wars X-Wing Fighter, at Velvetron.com.
(via Notcot.org)
Perhaps a few steps up from the level of RottenNeighbor.com, CrimeReports.com combines Google Maps with local law enforcement reports (still not available in some areas).
[Update from Heywood]:
If you, like me, tried this out and it isn’t yet available for your neighborhood, invite your police chief. Just a few clicks.
Once again, Google Maps is being put to good use.
RottenNeighbor.com - A venue to warn the universe about your as$hole neighbor who lets their dog crap on your front yard, or that creepy house down the block that might have a meth lab in the basement.
Though it will most likely be employed in anonymous abuse . . .
Por ejemplo:
To you jerks with the wind chimes! -
“Hey, do you people think that it was a coincidence that the wind chimes that hung off of your deck magically had a rubber band wrapped around them recently!? Maybe. Well, I was sure to put another one around it over the weekend. Hopefully, you will get the hint. Next time it keeps me awake or wakes me up I am going to take it to work and get it welded together. Thanks”
noisey sex -
“apt 28 has loud annoying sex till the wee hours of the morning”
(via Susan, via John, via BoingBoing)
Buy your very own JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank from Amazon.com for the low low price of $19,999.95. But beware– only 2 left in stock, so order soon!
Product Features
Make sure to take note that the $20G price does not include shipping and handling. Might be a bit pricey for a 1300 pound item…
[ed note: Shipping is only $14.99, and takes only 3-5 business days!]
(via SteveB)
Just when you thought that Google had done everything and then some, they go and announce a new move today: a partnership with Matsushita of Japan and YouTube, to bring Internet video to conventional plasma TVs.
IPTV has been touted for years now as the future (anyone remember Microsoft’s $425 million acquisition of WebTV in 1997?), but this move in particular, more than any other, could actually stand to have an impact in this space and inspire other content providers to interface with the solution. Sure, Microsoft has moved further into IPTV with MSNtv and lately, the Xbox 360, but to utilize these and other services, one has to buy hardware.
What will be interesting with the gTV, however, will be to see if what this looks like in a more concrete, developed form: will Google’s efforts be in the vein of the iPhone and Internet video, where only YouTube and other Google content (Picasa, for example) can be consumed through these TVs, or will other Internet video be available, such as Joost, Hulu, and network content? The possibilities seem endless, so it will be interesting to see the extent to which copyright concerns and other business partnerships (or potentially the lack thereof) affect the final product and consumer experience.
(via CNN Money)
Check it, folks– today Sony announced that the PSP’s next firmware update will include Skype, allowing PSP owners to make cheap Skype calls over WiFi. There haven’t been many details released yet, but the upgrade should be available late this month.
This is obviously a good move for consumers in the sense that it’s a step further toward wireless openness and thus, cheaper calling, but it’s also an interesting step for the PSP as a possible step toward becoming an iPhone rival: an all encompassing communications and media device (once you’ve installed a 3rd party web browser, of course). And with the PSP, you’ve got gaming quality and diversity that an iPhone simply can’t and will never be able to compete with.
Clearly, the PSP can’t be your full-time phone as you’re tethered to WiFi, but at home, school or the office, you’ve got got an extremely cheap VoIP phone. Perhaps we’ll see a future partnership between Sony and members of the Open Handset Alliance? (FYI, Sony is not currently a member of the Google-led OHA.) It seems that in light of Android and other developments, there likely would be demand for a touchscreen, Skype- and CDMA-enabled PSP, should Sony decide to produce it in the future. I’d certainly be interested…
(via Engadget)
If you’re like me and can’t live without Internet access, pick up from ThinkGeek the only known item that both clothes you, and also lets you know when you’re in a WiFi-enabled area. Not bad, for only $29.99… just make sure to take out the battery before you wash it!
(Thanks for the tip, Arian!)
Last night, I saw “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience.”
Life-sized free-moving animatronic dinosaurs.
Oh man . . . it kicked ten flavors of Jurassic robot as$!!
Here’s the video I made:
Spectacular Hi-Def video of the Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon. Recently taken by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (NAXA) lunar probe “SELENE/Kaguya”, launched September 14, 2007 and currently in orbit around the Moon.
(via WanderingSpace)
