Technical Stew

Heh.

ht to CrunchGear

For a mere $699 you can get this ultraportable rig.

The specs:

• 1.1 GHz Processor
  
• 30 Gig HD - Shock mounted
  
• 512 mb RAM
  
• 5.6" display @ 1024x600
  
• EVDO/Bluetooth/802.11b/g Wireless
  
• Windows XP
  

All of this comes in a 6"x4.5"x1.6" package weighing in at a hair under 1 lb. 9 oz. This actually strikes me in these days of warring ultraportables as a pretty good deal. You could throw Skype on it and wouldn't need a cell and it can do quite a bit more than your average smart phone. The little info pane on the outside lets you see things like how many emails you might have and you can read said mails without opening it up.

Flipstart Labs is the brain child of Paul Allen. The real news here is that until recently it cost over twice that much.

Just a few years ago I had a pager that was about this big. Exciting days folks.

X-Wing flight video

Or...At least that is the video of what they WANT you to think happened.....Here's the REAL footage!

Courtesy of IMDB.com, we have actual dialog between the pilot & ground control...(Just kidding UNMANNED flight)

Red Six: I got a problem here.
Biggs: Eject!
Red Six: I can hold it.
Biggs: Pull up!
Red Six: No, I'm all right... ahhh!
[Porkin's fighter explodes in a ball of fire]

And yet....it was SSSSOOOO COOOOOLLL!!!

McCoy: You realize that by giving him the formula you're altering history.
Scotty: Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing?

New plastic, Strong as Steel, transparent.

I always knew it was real!!

This Rocket-Powered 21-Foot Long X-Wing Model Actually Flies, maybe. It hasn't flown yet actually and the builders own that it's "likely [they] will have a structural failure in the wings, but we are hoping it will hold." Come the sixth, the world will know.

I hope so too my geek brothers, I hope so too. Oh and the best part? The wings will be able to open to attack mode in flight. WOW, I wish I had that much time and skill to put to use.

Full details on the build story, here.

The guys at Gizmodo clue us in to the new Sony PRS-505 Reader. The biggest change is the doubled capacity and the USB mass storage mode, which let's you treat this like an external drive, no software needed.

I'm a little optimistic about e-books in general and if you're gonna do one then this is how they need to be done. In addition to Sony e-books (20,000 titles in their store)this can read PDFs, JPEGs, rich and plain text formats. It also has slots for SD and Sony memory sticks. The battery is good for 7,500 page turns.

The only problem I have with this is the price. It's three hundred bucks. I can't in good conscience spend that much on this. They need to take a tip from cell phone companies. Charge a low end price for hardware, sign a one year contract, pay ten to twenty bucks a month and in exchange you get to download x number of books a month. I think that would be just fine.

I like my iPod shuffle, but size does lend certain advantages. So, just to add to yesterdays review of the Sansa View vs the iPod, iPod bonus features!

iPod stops a bullet for ya!

We love our fruit here at the Stew, but aren't opposed to looking at what other folks are doing in the world of portable media players. To that end we thought we'd do a quick side by side of the iPod Nano and Sansa's new PMP the View (not to be confused with that estrogen laden TV show or the old Sansa View).

The NYT has an article up on e-books, Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books. I've long been a fan of the idea and am particularly fond of the way Sony has done theirs.

Hopes for e-books began to revive last year with the introduction of the widely marketed Sony Reader. Sony’s $300 gadget, the size of a trade paperback, has a six-inch screen, enough memory to hold 80 books and a battery that lasts for 7,500 page turns, according to the company. It uses screen display technology from E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creates power-efficient digital screens that uncannily mimic the appearance of paper.

Sony will not say how many it has sold, but the Reader has apparently done well enough that Sony recently increased its advertising for the device in several major American cities.

“Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books,” said Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony. “That is where we see people, on the go, in the subway and in airports, with our device.”

And see that works for me. Three c-notes is a bit much, but the price should only come down. Or should it? Amazon will be releasing the Kindle in October, which will cost around five hundred "and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s site" (Amazon please look at what Apple did with the iPhone and reconsider). That's just too much. Granted it's got wi-fi and a browser, but given e ink's properties that is not what it's good for. Just put out a good product for a reasonable price and you'll have to beat them off with a stick.

The other problem is that Amazon will be using a proprietary format so it won't work on other e readers. Come ON, just put them out in an open format. Don't be stupid!

And B&N if they're smart will get in on this deal.

Stephen Riggio, chief executive at Barnes & Noble, argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete with Google and Amazon. Mr. Riggio said in an interview that the full texts of many books will become available on the company’s Web site over the next year to 18 months. He also said that Barnes & Noble was considering introducing its own electronic book reader — but only when it can sell one at a low price.

See that's smart. Of course the only reason they're playing smart is because they got burned three years ago.

At this point an e-reader is largely a toy, but I'm using a new free service to catch up on some classics via email and a wi-fi device that could catch those would totally rock. Getting my paper that way would also be a dream. Get with the program world!

This is one cool tool that can save you life. Cool Tools put up a testimonial about the SteriPEN which uses concentrated UV light to kill all of the bugs in your glass of water.

It's basically a UV ray flashlight you submerge into your glass. The water stays cool and it doesn't change the water, except to kill all the living things in it, viruses included. It is expensive, but pays for itself quickly, as you don't have to buy bottled water.

The person took it to Africa for three months, drank tap water treated with this UV stick and remained healthy the whole time. At $125 bucks it's certainly cheaper than a trip to the ER, that is if the place you're at even has one. He points out at the article's end that you can do the same thing by leaving a plastic bottle of water in direct sunlight for a couple of hours.

This gadget plus a filter straw would probably be good for any serious hiker/backpacker to have in their kit.

I have brewed exactly one five gallon batch of beer. It was fun. The beer was good and one day I shall do it again. But I would love to have a machine like this:

The Ultimate All-in-One Beer Brewing Machine was built by a Pop-Sci photographer. This "each step in the process requires moving the beer to a new container by hand, which increases the chance of contamination and requires you to lift stuff" is absolutely certain and the Device was designed to prevent those issues.

According to the Ministry of Tech the big G is actively seeking a manufacturer for their phone and the service will be free, supported by ads. Of course all of this is firmly in the rumor category at this point, but then so was that little Cuppertino phone not all that long ago. The report also says that it will be available next year, but that's probably pie in the sky. Mmmmmm free googley pie.

These are some high tech toys based on a video game so they certainly fall under our purview here at TS. Here we have the plasma weapons from Halo 3, brought to you by http://www.jasmantoys.com. They aren't quite to scale according to an interview with Bungie, because if they were they'd be huge. But they look mighty cool!

Okay so I'm wishing-hoping-praying-dreaming. But Google is closely involved in the FCC's sale of part of the UHF band in 2009. The government wants to make sure that, per Google's suggestion, whoever buys it will keep it "open".

This could mean access to a nationwide wireless internet. This could mean Google taking the place of Verizon. This could mean a whole host of very interesting things.

Let's just hope that the big G's corporate motto "Don't be evil." doesn't change with all of the success they're having.

As it is they're poised to play some serious ball with M$ thanks to their Google office project. They're going nose to nose with cellular companies if this pans out. They have sooo many irons in the fire, the temptation for world domination has got to be hard to deal with.