apple iphone vs. my nokia 6030

vs.






Everyone knows that Apple's new iPhone is changing the way we look at phones; reshaping the telecommunications industry; bridging the gap between computers, the internet, and consumer electronics; and ushering in the age of the personal space travel. What no one knows is how the iPhone stacks up to my venerable Nokia 6030, aka "the Brick". It's time to settle this matter once and for all. Let's see how this pans out.

-Functionality
The iPhone uses state of the art multi-touch technology to allow users to manipulate a screen without the use of buttons. The iPhone also runs Mac OS X and uses Safari to browse the internet. The Nokia uses buttons. It has no operating system because it is a phone, not a machine from the future. The internet comes to the iPhone by way of the old EDGE network, which is slower than 3G, but the internet comes to the Nokia by way of black magic, although it actually does work. Technically. Winner: iPhone

-Features
The iPhone can display photos and play videos and music. It also has full access to Google Maps, email, and Skynet (which will shortly become self-aware and destroy humanity unless the Terminator goes back in time to save John Connor). But all of that sucks in comparison to Tetris, which runs on my Nokia, but not on the Apple. Winner: Nokia

-Price
An iPhone will set you back $500-600 or so. My Nokia cost about $15 with service. I can also throw my Nokia against a wall and it will still function. Will an iPhone? Will anyone even risk trying it? Also, for those of you who tend to get drunk and lose your cellphones (ie: female Facebook users), it's better to lose a Nokia. Winner: Nokia

-Scoring Chicks
Adding a girl's digits into your iPhone instantly labels you as a huge dork...but a rich dork. Entering that number into your beat-up Nokia just makes you look cheap. Plus, you can play "New Slang" for your future lover from your iPhone to show her how sensitive you are. Better yet, just cue up Garden State. Winner: iPhone

-Picking Up Guys
Any girl looking to pick up a cute guy will certainly benefit from having an iPhone, as most men will be drawn towards it like The Exterminators towards Zardoz and will inevitably be impressed by a female's ability to use it. Winner: iPhone

-Conlusion
So which phone wins this scientific head-to-head contest? Clearly, the iPhone has some advantages, such as full access to the internet, navigation capabilities, and all of the features of an iPod. Everything is interwoven fairly seamlessly by way of the most user-friendly operating system on the planet and innovative touch screen technology. Yet for $485-585 less, you can get an indestructible phone that can a) make phone calls, and b) play Tetris. So although the iPhone has a lot to offer, in the end, the Nokia emerges as the clear winner.

the cyborgs are upon us

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba (in Japan--where else?) have developed a robotic suit that amplifies the strength of the user and potentially allows the user to lift up to 10 times his normal capabilities.

The suit, known as the Hybrid Assisstive Limb (HAL), has already been used to help a parapeligic man almost summit a mountain. Rumor has it that the developers are getting the device ready for commercial production.

See it in action:



via Weird Asia News + Engadget

lenovo > apple

Greenpeace's newly released Guide to Greener Electronics names the Chinese company Lenovo as the greenest electronics company, with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Dell coming up behind. Apple ranks at dead last on the scale.

Is the scale accurate? Call me skeptical, but as Slob's resident Sinologist, I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that Lenovo's environmental practices probably aren't as good as they claim. Inhabitat agrees with me, and goes further in its criticism of the Guide:

"There is something suspect in Greenpeace’s latest installment of the Green Electronics Guide, as the guide rates electronics brands on their web-based chemical policy reports, rather than on [their] environmental impact...Lenovo, the China-based PC maker that bought IBM’s PC business, jumped from last place in August to first place in the most recent report...The company’s actual environmental impact record could not have made such stratospheric change in that time frame. Lenovo is being rewarded for directly responding to Greenpeace’s campaign. Meanwhile, Apple is singled out for not responding to Greenpeace’s demands, ranking last on the list....The problem with Greenpeace’s campaign is the focus on toxicity and recycling while excluding one of the major contributors to climate change – energy expended during manufacturing and use."

Indeed, Greenpeace's Green My Apple campaign has been running for some time, and it points out that Apple's products are chock full of many non-biodegradable substances that competing electronic manufacturers have abandoned. At the same time, Apple's notebooks outrank Lenovo's according to the EPA's EPEAT ranking, which is far more thorough than Greenpeace's "standards." What's the moral of the story? Greenpeace's Electronics Guide is another one of their typical, attention-grabbing campaigns--high-style, low substance. Anyone else remember them crashing their boat into a reef that they were supposed to protect in 2005?

via Inhabitat + Greenpeace

google language tools

I will not make a joke about something being lost in translation, I promise.

Google's relatively new Language Tools can search foreign language web pages and translate text and web pages in a whole host of languages, including text that does not translate electronically very easily (such as Arabic, Japanese, and simplified and traditional Chinese).

I used the software to translate simplified Chinese text today, and it works surprisingly well. Unlike Apple's useless Sherlock, which supposedly also translates Chinese, Google's translation was actually comprehensible and reasonably accurate, and with a bit of finessing, one could easily use the software as a foundation for more accurate translations.

Here it is (clothed in Baby Blue for Firefox 2.0, in case anyone is wondering). Click on the image and you can see it full-sized.

compostable plates, trash bags, etc.

Recyclaholics produces %100 compostable food service ware and trash bags. The company's products are certified compostable by the U.S. Composting Council and leave no known residues in the ground or water supply when composted in the right conditions. The company produces cellophane made from cottonwood trees farmed for specifically for cellophane production.

Recyclaholics' product line includes plates, cutlery/flatware, "to-go" packaging, napkins, cups, and similar items. The goods are are aimed primarily at the food service industry but are also available to the consumer.

via Recyclaholics

DRM-free music from EMI

Alright. I'm not a Steve Jobs fanboi. I'm just not. I love Apple's products; I hate Apple's pricing; I don't mind iTunes DRM because I use an iPod. But I get it. DRM sux0r and all that.

So it's a pretty big deal that EMI (one of the Big Four) is dropping DRM from all of their digital offerings. You know, just like when you buy a CD. It means a lot for digital content distribution. iTunes users can put their music on the Zune. Of course, Zune users can just buy it from the Zune store, but they'd have the option of putting on an iPod. You get the picture.

But the real reason this is a big deal has nothing to do with devices. It has nothing to do with El Jobso carefully dodging European litigation. It means that someone in the music industry, somewhere, has finally figured it out. Whether or not Steve had any effect on the eventual decision, EMI has finally agreed that the people who buy music online are more interested in paying for a product than pirating it:

Q: Is this a green light for piracy?
Eric: no, we take the view that we have to "trust consumers." Some will disappoint us. The idea is to give them the best music experience to grow sales and not diminish them.¹

This is a big deal because someone, somewhere, finally got it right. Now we'll see if the rest falls into place.

thanks, god

Recently, techies at the University of Oslo built an evolutionary computer that changes the design of it's own hardware using genetic algorithms to optimize performance. This is pretty amazing, considering the now-present possibilities for the rapid evolution of Strong AI by having computers design themselves. It reminds me of Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity:

"Just like in the real world it can take 20 to 30 thousand generations before the system finds the perfect design to solve the problem, but this will happen in just a few seconds compared to the 8-900,000 years it took humans to go through the same number of generations." via BoingBoing

Yeah, thanks God. Real fair. Asshole.

texas instruments cell phone projector

Texas Instruments has introduced a "pico-projector", a device small enough to be built into a cell phone that will allow users to project cell phone-based images and video onto any surface.

DailyTech reports that the projector uses three lasers and a DLP chip (for those of you who care) to provide "DVD-quality video, and the projection technology allows an effective screen size that far surpasses even the largest cell phone displays."

Just wait until you're on an airplane and someone is projecting cell-phone videos on the seat back in front of them. It doesn't come on an iPhone though, so it must not be that cool....

via DailyTech

weighing in on the sirius / xm merger

Man, it can be hard to keep your head above water. You’ve got lobbyists complaining to the SEC, the FCC complaining that the sat radio licenses are (already!) being violated, the National Association of Broadcasters running copyright-infringing advertisements about anti-trust infringing mergers, and advocates on both sides screaming “pork!”

So what’s the question behind the Sirius/XM merger? It’s simple, really. Here’s how it boils down for the consumer (you, me; you know, most of us):

1. Ballyhoo! The merger will create a monopoly on sat radio and allow Sirius/XM to increase prices and ignore the consumer’s implicit “rights” (in all such cases of consumer-scare-ism, “rights” translates to “low prices”).
2. Huzzah! This way, Sirius and XM will standardize the industry and combine their programming (football and baseball on one device, wow, damn!). How could it go wrong?

Sigh. Like I said, this is a confusing situation. Personally, I find myself on the side of Ballyhoo!, for what I think are good reasons.

First, this will be creating a monopoly. There’s no two ways about it. I’ve seen arguments trumpeting terrestrial radio as a competitor of satellite’s, but the difference in technology, delivery, and, most importantly, advertising makes comparisons between the two an apples-to-oranges job; the kind of punditry reserved for CNN or Fox News. I’d like to ask users of sat radio to head back to the old days of terrestrial broadcasts for one commute, and then tell me it’s the same industry. Same thing goes for MP3 players or internet radio. There appears to be some confusion between “listening to things” and “market.”

So monopoly it is. While this doesn’t immediately bode poorly for those of us who already use one of the services, I don’t need to tell you about its potential. A big part of this country’s history is antitrust litigation; you’ve all heard about it, and whether or not you agree with it, it’s all about protecting your “rights.” Matters of principle aside, this merger holds real threats, especially to the SEC who will later be tasked with breaking everything apart again, just like those FCC licenses said should happen.

Second, this will standardize nothing. The industry will eventually develop another competitor, either when the SEC smacks it down or when Rupert Murdoch blesses someone’s coffers with enough cash money to overcome what will be a MASSIVE barrier to entry. Meanwhile, Sirius/XM will have standardized their own proprietary technology (whoo). Standardization is not something that comes from one place, since it initially reduces potential profit for all of those proprietary monsters out there (hello, Sony? Listen up, m’kay?). It has to happen when an industry isn’t syncing the way it should be. This industry will have no one left to sync with.

Finally, competition is good. How very un-revolutionary. But the reason prices have stayed low is that even the sat radio Oligarchy of Two couldn’t risk inflating prices. That one hasn’t massively undercut the other and pushed them out of business is surprising, but also illegal so I guess that makes sense for now.

And that’s what I think. I like pretending to be an expert.

open source music

Opsound is an online open source community for musicians and sound artists. Particpants simply upload their sound files to the site under a Creative Commons Attributive-ShareAlike license. This copyleft license allows users to "download works, make copies, share them, include them in other works, remix and rearrange them, and even sell them."

There's some pretty weird stuff on Opsound, and the site seems to attract people into music ranging from ambient and musique concrete to house and trance, and genres listed on their site include "algorithmic" (Xenakis, anyone?), "pscyhogeography," and, well, "country."

Potentially, Opsound might produce some very interesting music. I'd also be curious to see if this model could be applied to video or other media.

Stream Opsound radio here.

un airbus a380 en 7 minutes

Apparently, you can actually build an airplane in 7 minutes--in French. Here's the video of Airbus's new monstrosity that made its debut in North America this week. The behemoth is "as tall as a seven-story building, roomy enough to fit 70 vehicles on its wings, as heavy as 500 Volkswagen Golfs and big enough to carry 35 million ping pong balls." Yeah, but Boeing 747s are big enough to take out a 110 story building. Too soon?



[via Gridskipper, The Lede]

2007 geneva car show; a look into the future of "green"

The 2007 Geneva Motor Show was much more than a display of futuristic, street-legal, racing vehicles with a hard on for speed and handling. No, no, no. The show previewed the top ten green cars of 2007.

With the imminent threat of global warming and climate change on the agendas of policymakers and obviously consumers, the auto world is striving to fill the void of green vehicles.

I am still dubious as to the American people's actual desire to "go green," but the shift in automobile production and direction is a definite step in the right direction.

Consumers are more likely to purchase hybrid/diesel engine vehicles if they are 'fly', or in Paris' rhetoric 'hot', which Mercedes-Benz C220 BLUTEC and VW's Passat BlueMotion have fulfilled with their 50 mpg emission-cutting vehicles of 2007.

Among the other top green cars of the show was Saab's 9-3 convertible biopower and Toyota's “completely recyclable zero-emissions car” and technology in the Hybrid X.

What else will they come up with next?

nerds everywhere are waiting with bated breath

Rupert Murdoch's semi-recent acquisition, MySpace will receive a beating this month.

The bullies, two hackers that go by the names Mondo Armando and Mustaschio, announced on their LiveJournal that April 2007 will by the "Month of Myspace Bugs, Yuss!" (MOMBY, I swear...)

MOMBY follows in a string of Month of X Bugs and will consist of small bugs on your MySpace profile throughout the whole month.

You can avoid the bugs by adding mondo_armando@catholic.org to your spam blocker and http://momby.livejournal.com/ to your proxy blocker. You can also e-mail Mondo Armando suggestions for bugs. If there's something about MySpace that really irks you for some reason or other, let him know.

Don't worry emo kids, these hackers aren't harmful and April's not too long. Plus, I'm kind of excited to see what they have up their sleeves!

[via AHN]

tesla roadster for sale this fall

Have you been waiting for a gorgeous, stunningly fast sportscar that won't singelhandedly cause the polar ice caps to melt, killing all the cute penguins? Wait no longer. The Tesla Roadster is a 100% electric, 135 mpg beauty that goes 0-60 in about 4 seconds.

Yes indeed, a fast, stylish car that you can feel good about driving. Plus, at $92,000, it's practically a steal. Just think about all the money you'll save on gas. There are also rumors floating around Gizmodo about a Tesla sedan, but no info on Tesla's site.

Five dealerships are slated to open this fall in Chicago, New York, Northern and Southern California, and Florida. Reserve your Roadster now, they're going to go fast. Pun intended.

[via Josh Spear]

"world's smallest" is "my favorite"

Kingmax's incredibly small Super Stick measures an wild 34- x 12.4- x 2.2-mm. Somehow everything small is impressive. I love small ketchup bottles, vinyl figurines, and well-made dioramas. But tiny USB flash drives take the cake.

Usually innovative technology this impossibly small comes at a price, but the Super Stick runs pretty cheap. 512MB ($19), 1GB ($29), 2GB ($39), and 4GB ($55). On Amazon, you can pick up the 1GB for an astounding $8.90!

[via Engadget]

students at the University of Michigan beware

STOP illegally downloading songs on campus computers! Don't use bittorrent; don't use Kazaa; halt your Soulseek-ing!

The RIAA has identified IP addresses of p2p file-sharers in Ann Arbor and intends to sue according to a letter from Paul Howell, Chief Information Technology Security Officer of the University of Michigan. The letter, intercepted by Wired, encourages faculty and staff members to remove p2p file-sharing programs from their computers and to download their music legally (through iTunes, MSN Music, Ruckus, Rhapsody, etc.)

Luckily, UofM will not release names unless subpoenaed. The University is in the process of identifying the students themselves and issuing a warning.

For more info and a copy of the letter, check Wired.

divvio set to launch

Alarm:clock reports that Divvio is expected to launch out of closed beta testing any day now.

According to Bussinesweek, Divvio will be a "service that automatically finds audio, video, and, eventually, text, on your favorite subjects. Then it weaves these clips together to create personalized multimedia channels that are updated each time you sign on." I'm guessing the name oh-so-cleverly derives from "digital video", but I'm not an expert on these things.

Divvio's founder, former AT&T executive Hossein Eslambolchi has raised $3m in angel funding for the tech startup. Slob will be reviewing Divvio soon, so check back for more.

TED concludes this weekend; world emerges better

The annual invitation-only Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference concluded on Saturday in Monterey, CA, and boy was it mind-blowing. Actually, we wouldn't know, because no one at Slob was invited.

The conference brings together 1,000
"thhought leaders, movers and shakers" from around the globe to discuss the latest trends, ideas, and innovation in virtually every field and subject area. Businessweek has a nice slideshow of the conference, and TED's blog provides some highlights of the events. Or check out the videos.

I, Robot?

It appears as though Dr. Isaac Asimov's tales of humans and robots coexisting in society may not have been too far fetched. This past week, scientists in South Korea began drafting an ethical code to bar humans from harming robots and robots from harming humans. To many, this may seem a bit premature. The only robots most people see on a daily basis are in the form of toys, assembly line machines, and vacuum cleaners. However, developments in robotics have resulted in humanoid robots that can react to human touch, understand multiple languages, and even change their eye color and robot-face expression based on mood.

As robots become more human-like with the not-too-far-off development of artificial intelligence, this ethical code will become more important. If robots can think and learn and make their own decisions, can they be at fault for mistakes they make? Is the owner of the robot to blame? Is the company that built the robot responsible? The ethical code will hopefully answer these questions along with numerous others that will arise with the advent of A.I.

Once this technology is out there, the questions are going to be never ending. Will there be different laws governing different models of robots? Can robots be used in combat? Will they be primarily human servants? If they can think and feel can they get depressed? Can they fall in love with other robots? I hope I live to see robots integrated into society, but there will no doubt be very strict guidelines set forth regarding their use.

Want to see Hollywood's version of what robots living with humans will be like? I recommend watching Blade Runner, Westworld, or A.I.

good news for the climate

In all-star day for, well, the world, the European Union announced the creation of a binding target for the implementation of renewable energy including solar, wind, and hydroelectric power. According to the BBC:

The 27 EU states will each decide how they contribute to meeting a 20% boost overall in renewable fuel use by 2020.The measures could include a ban on filament light bulbs by 2010, forcing people to switch to fluorescent bulbs....It is thought the EU could offer to extend its 20% target for emissions cuts to 30% if other heavy polluters like the US, China and India come on board.

The EU's agreement will have a large net impact on climate change and will hopefully force the rest of the industrialized world into taking more considerable action to combat global warming.

Meanwhile, President Bush signed a deal today with President Lula de Silva of Brazil to cooperare on the development of ethanol from sugar cane. According to SmartMoney.com, "the two nations intend to help third countries, beginning in Central America and the Caribbean, to stimulate private investment for local production and consumption of biofuels." Unfortuntely, President Bush stopped short of reviewing tariffs on imports of ethanol.

While the United States is now officially lagging behind Europe in the development of renewable energy, the ethanol agreement might be a step in the right direction. Furthermore, we may see more positive developments come 2008 when the Bush administration is out of office. Meanwhile, write your congressional representative, copy this story, and tell them that you want the House to debate binding targets for renewable energy.