But for the moment, look at the picture.

There are a few things in the Diamond that are iPhone-esque. Just Like Samsung’s Armani phone and LG’s Prada.

However, the iPhone world order is such that the iPhone thrives on a lot of third-party apps and support -- the whole iPhone culture. For the competition, chipping away at such world order is tall order.

Verdict: Bring it on (if only because iPhone has become so commonplace).

After Intel’s Dunnington hexa-core hype, AMD has been embarking on an around-the-world epiphany of sorts, tinkering with its Barcelona hexa-core chip to come up with Shanghai, which has the HyperTransport 3.0 clock generator right.

What is the point of NapTV by designer Sung-kyu Na? Umm see picture. It looks like kiddy stuff but NapTV isn’t just the way to make your kid lazy, man. And please, it isn’t the coolest chair to sit on while doing school work. Your kid will mostly likely watch TV most of the time. ”Mom, it’s the NapTV for what it is!”

So, a kid and a kid-at-heart might be better off socializing with the opposite sex.

Verdict: Now, don’t they make a version for the whole family? Pretty terminal.

Yup, replace the internet. That’s how the Global Grid Forum would have it. A while ago, I posted about the revolutionary Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. One tiny thing I forgot to mention is the incredible computing power needed to process endless data that the LHC will be churning out (said to be some peta-bytes of data annually, whatever would that be).

Solution: Invent a turbocharged internet that will connect supercomputers around the world. The whole thing is ominously called the Grid or the LHC Computing Grid. The specs include dedicated routing, fiber optics, servers, and, of course, supercomputers. Result: Download that’s 10000 times faster than broadband. That’s faster than Caltech’s Fast Transmission Control Protocol ( = 6000x faster). It turns out Caltech is involved in the Grid project.

However, the Grid is more than just fast downloads. It’s really about consolidating the world’s supercomputers to detect and analyze elusive sub-atomic particles (at this point).

And before I forget, the Grid is already online. It’s time to coin new terms, man! Where were you when I was plugged into the Matrix, er, the Grid? Still surfing? Haha!

Verdict: Said to download the Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in two seconds.

Revised verdict: Hints at the Matrix, Terminator 3, I Robot, and other overbearing meta-conscious AI.

Yup, the picture says it all. But this watch, designed by Crispin Jones, is called the Accurate not only because it’s purported to be the most accurate fancy wristwatch you can buy, but also because we all agree that, indeed, yes, we’re gonna die sometime (maybe except Britney Spears, arghh).

I think you can go formal or casual with this watch. But please do so in the company of cool dudes. Most reactions I’m reading are uncool and uninformed. So let’s clear this up. A statement from Crispin Jones goes: “Today everyone has a mobile phone to do the really functional timekeeping, this means that the wristwatch is free to do something a bit different. The watches I design reflect and comment on society, both on the role that time plays in all our lives and also on the social impact of technology. ”

In other words, I’m just writing this post and I’m really tired and this world is a weary place and everything is just speeding by, but when I look at my watch, I’m reminded of the simple things that are worth valuing and enjoying (like my face when it’s reflected on the watch’s mirror face; LOL). In short, life is short.

Except that — what? It costs $145? (OK, still, it’s not in the price range of a status symbol.)

Remember. You will die.

The war’s over, Blue-ray won, and all the romantic attempts at revolution came for naught for HD DVD Promotion Group. To its fans, it kinda left a brief directive or interment announcement at their site, which may have been generated by a bot. That’s rude. But that’s because the guys are probably still disconsolate over their beloved HD DVD.

But cry no more. In the sweepingly broadband future, the war will seem puny. The past will always seem funny. See ya around, HD DVD.

In a time when we are barraged with a thousand and one ways to save the planet, the elegant and uncluttered ones always win our hearts. For example, with regards to the problem of space shortage/homelessness, perceived or otherwise, Jin-Hul Kim’s low-tech but portable Space Book just amazes. It offers space savings by, what else, popping up to reveal life-size furnished spaces.

Of course, it’s yet a novel idea but the possiblities are endless — pop-up toilets, pop-up brothels, pop-up shopping malls, pop-up main battle tanks, pop-up anything, pop-up ****. If they can do hurricane-proof Space Books for New Orleans, that’d be cool.

On to the next concept. While the above is a space-saver, the Rainbow Book below is one hell of a pop-up book that will waste your time. Give your eyes a break from the monitor and flip a Rainbow Book. It’s actually a flip book but kindof pop-up too since when you rapidly flip its pages, a rainbow kindof pops up.

Oh my goodness. It’s the frameless ceramic Izona CookSurface, previously called Project Luna. Who would have thought you can actually make love to a gasrange? In fact, Fisher&Paykel, the appliance company, might take offense to calling their thing of beauty a gasrange. It's art.


Beauty + ergonomics always pawns clunky high tech. If you look at MP3 players, iPod’s competition, short on design, always cram media players with everything to compensate. But people buy design over clunk. All the high tech in Izona, including its patented retractable AeroInspiro oven, is seamlessly welded to design.

The EnerJar by Matt Meshulam and Zach Dwiel was king at the recent Greener Gadget Design Competition in New York City. Despite its simplicity, it won against high-tech-looking gadgets. Its simplicity was actually its strongest point.

“[It’s] an easy-to-build device that accurately measures the power draw of electrical appliances. The user plugs the EnerJar into any three-prong wall outlet, and measures a device by plugging it into the outlet on the EnerJar. It is our goal that users of the power meter will gain an understanding of power draw and use this knowledge to effectively reduce their electricity use.

“A simple interface was a high priority in designing the EnerJar, so a single ‘mode’ knob is the only control on the meter. This knob selects among displaying instantaneous power, average power, or cumulative energy consumption in kilowatt-hours.”

So, true to my fashion, I’m sensing a touch of iPod in that single knob.

Now what’s more, the schematics and source code for creating Enerjar is available for free at enerjar.net. I love these guys. I’m saving my sarcasm for the next post.

We hate our alarm clocks for ruining Monday mornings and unleashing the inner Hulk in us. And later on, we hate them as we tear apart little animals that cross our paths.

At thruvison.com, the thing is a camera, far from resembling cool shades and is named T5000, maybe with Terminator in mind. Terminator security deployed in airports, eh? But the “T” actually stands for terahertz. (Terabyte, terawatt, terahertz. The age of tera is upon us.)

I dunno if this is Japanese or what but I could really use some Clocky, the alarm clock with a dorky name. The blurb at sharperimage.com states:

Nah. But maybe he’d say, Coulda been the forerunner of the wheel bike. (FYI, he was riding the wheel bike while being chased by Obi-wan Kenobi in Episode 3.)

As for our new fad, Orbit Wheel skates ($145 at newdavincis.com), I saw it on Youtube. You have this pair of large wheels literally orbiting around your feet as you skate around sideways. It’s cool for the novelty.

Quick. What do Wolverine’s claws and the spikes of K2 porcupine have in common?
Ans. Except being retractable,  none. (The big difference is Wolverine — doesn’t exist, of course.)

Maybe you’re a geek and you now feel going back to a simpler time, recalling that your momma wasn’t keen on the idea of having a pet rock around the house. It’s payback time.

Now that I have your attention, actually it’s only half a terabyte. I’m referring to Buffalo’s MiniSation Turbo. (It’s the big DriveStation that’s 1 terrabyte.)

June 2008. Swamped with betas? Here’s more.
Add to your Firefox 3 beta the new Internet Explorer 8 beta. As an early beta, IE8 did poorly in Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test. That makes IE8 beta farout remote from alpha.

Still, developers rejoiced as Microsoft promised the new browser will stick to industry-standard code. As everyone knows, Microsoft got a lot of flak with IE7 for adding trademarked code to industry standards. As a result, for example, pages that were OK on IE7 were crap on Firefox, and vice versa. Web developers had to tinker with code some more.

May 2008. And you thought that, when you scratched her back, your lover was the only truly touch-sensitive thing in the whole world.

Sony’s Blu-ray could as well lay claim to genuine Megatron heritage (if you watched Michael Bay’s Transformers movie). That is, when Blu-ray won the drawn-out DVD format war this month. But pray this win isn’t deja vu.

Back in the ’80s, VHS’s victory over Sony’s Betamax was tainted with insinuations that VHS had brownie points other than superior technology - such as, umm, the availability of porn in VHS.

Back to present day. There’s always that nagging problem with the cheap, brittle, and easily wearing-out DVD format, especially now that Blu-ray comes in mega gigs. And the problem is that it can accelerate piracy.

I woke up one day realizing that what the Blu-ray format needs is a new rival such as — tadaaah, flash drives, which kindof remind me of those expensive Atari cartridges of yore. Oh have you heard of those artists experimenting with flash drive releases?

Maybe this is nuts but the upside to flash drives is that if they were the universal portable format today, they’d last. They’d help unify storage and media players. Plus, it would be expensive to peddle around pirated copyright material in flash drive format. (Hey, it’s moot. I’m not sidling up to those behemoth corporations.)

March 2008. Remember the time when Microsoft bundled Explorer to Windows and the competition cried, “Antitrust!”?Ha, that one looks puny now.

Google has been bundling everything to the web.Word processor. Spreadsheet. Youtube. Gmail. Google Earth. Adsense. Adwords. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum. And now come freebie web site edit tools, said Google’s Girouard.

This proves two things: First, Bill Gates was wrong when he once said that porting software from somewhere else for home or office use on a per-use basis would be impractical. (OK, he’s known for his predictions as well as mis-predictions.)

Second, I don’t think that Google’s effect on people around the world, e.g., the democratization of happiness, is an antitrust issue. 

March 2008. Here comes Walkman v. 1.00123456789 . . . Or NW-A820.

It’s sad that Walkman, a beloved brand way, way older than iPod, comes across as an iPod wannabe. Despite the features it dangles with the revamped Walkman or its many reincarnations (the Walkman line; versions whachamacalit) like noise-cancelling whatnot, Sony knew all along that a paradigm shift to wean people away from the iPod craze is far-off as of the moment.

Apple’s philosophy has always been: design and ergomomics the Apple way — a deceptively tough nut to crack. Still, the NW-A820 Walkman, like other Ipod wannabes, offers us possibilities and keeps Apple on its toes.

It's just that this Walkman looks like a lookalike of another iPod lookalike fail. LOL. This despite the fact that it’s really ok. I mean, man, you’d be sad to open a gift box, expecting an iPod or iPod touch, only to find a Walkman. :)