Lego biped robots are a dime a dozen, even while some look pretty sweet. This one is special: It’s the first walking Lego robot. And, unlike your usual feet-dragging toy robots, it actually walks by raising its feet. More »

If I were Neil deGrasse Tyson—host of the Pluto Files and director of the Hayden Planetarium—I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Not after reading the hate mail from thousands of outraged American kids. More »

Some days, it happens two or three times. I bet that you and most of your friends and family find themselves in the same situation too. [Loldwell] More »

According to Jonathan Schwartz—then Sun’s CEO—that’s what Steve Jobs told him over the phone after Sun presented Looking Glass, a desktop concept similar to Mac OS X’s. After that, Schwartz put Steve in his place:

“Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?” Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. “And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.” Steve was silent.

And probably foaming at the mouth, and wanting to send Luca Brasi to get Jonathan brand new cement shoes.

Even while Apple uses BSD as the basis for Mac OS X, I bet Jobs realized the stupidity of his call, realizing that Sun had a very strong IP portfolio, and plenty of ammo to fight Apple back. Something that HTC—or Google, for that matter—, when it comes to phones, don’t have. [Johnathan Schwartz via Silicon Alley Insider]

I can imagine a future dry Earth in which nature only exists inside huge buildings like this Freshwater Factory Skyscraper, designed by Design Crew for Architecture to produce freshwater from sea water on the south coast of the Spain.

Here’s how it works: The brackish water—a sightly desalinized water—is pumped into the self-sufficient structure using tide-powered pumps. Then, inside the spheres, mangrove trees feed on that water, transforming it and exuding freshwater that evaporates. This water vapor is collected for human consumption by an internal pipe system.

The result: This building can produce 30,000 liters of freshwater per day. The design won an honorable mention at the [Evolo via Inhabitat]

According to Microsoft, Pivot’s “a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online,” enabling “spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of [invisible] patterns and links.” According to me, it’s awesome.

Pivot allows you to create and access data collections made from massive amounts of web information in a visual way. It keeps the same interface independently of the content of the collection, allowing you to dive in the data with ease, zoom out, reorder the collection in any way you want, filter data with one click, and establish relationships between different data sets with ease.

To do this, it uses meta-information within an open XML structure to make those collections—which vary in complexity. Then it allows the user to manipulate the data view using Seadragon, a display technology specifically designed to move around titanic amounts of data and graphics in real time.

Like Windows Phone 7 or Natal, Pivot shows that Microsoft is using those research doublons in creating truly amazing stuff these days. Download and try it in your PC now. Unfortunately, there’s no Mac OS X version yet. [Microsoft Pivot]

Warning: If you don’t want to waste a lot of time today, tomorrow, and the rest of the year, don’t open the door to 137 years of Popular Science. Those old school mags are addictive. [PopSci]

I don’t know how solid these are, but they look so yummy.

I want a bite too. [Enoc Armengol via Core77]

Having read the original many times, watched multiple films and TV series, and collected every object imaginable, I must confess that I’m an Alice whore. Here’s my review of Tim Burton‘s sequel: I love it. But not on 3D.

Spoilers ahead

In fact, I like everything about the movie except the 3D. I don’t hate it, but it’s obnoxious and distracting through most of the film. It just doesn’t add anything to the experience beyond the post-movie dizziness. It’s the antithesis of Avatar.

The movie itself—a simple, delightfully wacky, adventures movie set in Lewis Caroll’s crazy world—is good. The story, the dialogs, the photography, the direction, and the acting are all spot on. The digital effects are perfect for the story, from the delicate details of the White Rabbit’s embroidered vest to the intricate scenarios. The design—like all Tim Burton’s movies—couldn’t be better: The characters, the costumes, the settings… everything exudes the spirit of the original John Tenniel’s book illustrations. And then there is the adult Alice—who returns after her first adventures in Wonderland. By the end of it, you will fall in love with Mia Wasikowska, especially when she gets into her shiny armor.

Focus!

The only problem with Alice in 3D is that the film doesn’t seem to be directed with 3D in mind. And that’s fucking great (if you watch the movie in a normal theater and avoid the 3D). Burton plays with camera moves, angle changes, depth of field, and different scene planes like he usually does, framing shots perfectly.

One example of this is the first action sequence in the movie, when the Knave of Hearts—eerily played by Crispin Glover—and his card soldiers chase Alice through the woods. As the camera frantically races with the action, Burton plays with the foreground—twisted plants and branches—to increase the anxiety levels of the audience. In 2D, this frames the action, making everything more exciting visually. In 3D, it becomes distracting. The same goes for every time the camera moves, and every time the depth of field changes: The illusion of 3D is broken by the distraction, because that’s not how your brain processes the real world.

In the real world, nobody forces you to change the depth of field. When you are focusing on something, you just focus, it comes naturally to you. But when you shift this around in a 3D movie, your brain just gets confused, as if it’s saying “hey, I want to keep looking at that thing.”

In a normal film, a shift in focus is a device that is part of the story telling and the aesthetics of the film. In 3D, it just gets annoying.

Thinking Inside the Box

And that’s precisely my problem with 3D: Whenever you move the camera, whenever you play with the traditional cinematic language, 3D can often get in the middle.

I realized it while watching the credits, which roll inside a box in which fantastic mushrooms and vegetation grow. I was truly amazed by it, as if a new world had opened in front of my eyes. I had a hard time distinguishing the weird plants from reality. And it wasn’t only me: My wife was next to me and I could hear her exclaiming “Wow. Oh, wow.”

So how can I love that 3D but hate the 3D during the movie? Because during the credits, the camera point of view is fixed. The illusion is complete. Nothing bothers you. Your brain completely buys the experience. It’s like being in the theater watching a play: Everything is there.

What is the solution to this? Since the invention of cinema, humans have developed a language that has evolved into different paths. All of them revolve around the idea that everything is projected in a bidimensional plane. Directors frame their movies in their minds, then with their cameras, and it’s all related to that single flat silver screen.

Perhaps directors need to invent a new language for 3D altogether, where everything is in focus, nothing overlaps the action, and the depth of field never changes. Maybe they should look into the rules of theater and fixed cameras. Or maybe they should watch Up! if they really want to film a movie in 3D.

But while we all wait for that to happen, you should go and see Alice in 2D. You will enjoy it a lot more.

According to ChangeWave, the Kindle is going to have a hard time surviving the incoming iPad wave. In a 3171-people survey on Amazon.com users looking to buy an ebook reader, 40% said they were planning to buy the iPad.

Comparatively, 28% wanted to get the Amazon Kindle, despite having a longer life, more titles in the store, and allegedly offering a better book reading experience than the iPad thanks to its electronic ink technology. The 28% to 40% comparison is higher than we thought, actually, with Kindle still doing fairly well in comparison to Apple’s do-everything device.

The reason the iPad scored higher? Most probably, ereader shoppers are more excited about the color screen, Apple’s design, and the multiple functions that the iPad can offer, compared to the single-function nature of Amazon’s black-and-white, no multitouch, no fancy-schmancy design electronic reader. It’ll be interesting to see what Kindle 3 brings, since Amazon is working on a full color, multitouch version. [ChangeWave]

In March 3, 1916, the US Congress founded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, only a 12 years after the Wright Brothers’ first ever flight. In 1920, they built their first wind tunnel. And in 1958, it became NASA.

Initially, NACA was created because Europe got way ahead of the US after the Wrights flew the Kitty Hawk. They soon got up to speed, however. They built their first wind tunnel—above—at Langley Field, Virginia, in 1920. It was pretty rudimentary, but it served them to build their next big wind tunnel: the Langley Laboratory’s Variable Density Tunnel, in 1923. Only four years later, they built the Propeller Research Tunnel:

A full-scale Sperry M-1 Messenger being tested in NACA’s Propeller Research Tunnel, in 1927

Their engineers did a great job, publishing results of their research for everyone in the aeronautics industry. By World War 2, their work on aircraft engineering had directly influenced some of the greatest airplanes ever to fly the Earth’s skies, and the United States were way ahead of everyone else in aircraft development, both for prop and jet engine-powered planes.

By the end of 50s, NACA was already figuring out spaceflight. The Russians were ahead, however. That’s when it was dissolved only to be reborn as the NASA we all love today. [NASA]

After publishing the The Most Accurate, Highest Resolution Earth View to Date, it got extremely popular: The day after, countless newspapers and blogs worldwide reposted the story. NASA wrote to us, surprised. Why? Because everyone already knew about it:

Yes, the Blue Marble is the iPhone’s default screen, which have been seen by millions of iPhone owners and by everyone who has read about the iPhone since 2007. In fact, the image has been public since 2002:

From: *************** <***********@nasa.gov>
Subject: Question on Blue Marble image from NASA
Date: March 2, 2010 8:17:49 PM EST
To: Jesus Diaz

Mr. Diaz

Hello. I am the photo editor for the Public Affairs Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

We were happy to see you featured our Blue Marble image on your website last week.

http://gizmodo.com/5478787/the-most-accurate-highest-resolution-earth-view-to-date#comments

We also featured it on our Flickr page but it has really taken off on the web. We had over 500,000 hits in the last two days alone.

Given that this is an image from 2002 I’m just curious what prompted you to post it on your site? Or did you pick it up from someplace other than our site? I see at the bottom it says “NASA via Twitter”

Really, I’m just curious because it’s gotten so much play over that few days.

Thank you for your interest in our work.

Take care,
Rebecca

The reason? Because it’s a beautiful image, that’s all. One that makes you marvel at the beauty of our planet, and how tiny and insignificant we are, but also how unique and rare. [Gizmodo—Thanks to John Hermann for telling me about the obvious]

Don’t forget to check NASA Goddard’s Flickr page. They keep posting really cool stuff.

At the beginning there were Ibuka and Morita, the founders of Sony. At the end, a clusterfuckassery of blah models. And in the middle, a Big Bang of brilliant electronic gadgets, full of firsts and smallests. Here’s the whole timeline.

Click on the image to see it full res

Seriously, nothing shows better the power of the 1000fps Phantom camera than a scary masked man cracking a watermelon open with a baseball bat. But it freaks me out. Now I need some dogs catching treats.

These Phantoms are amazing. What would you film if you had one of them? [Barzart]

IBM is replacing copper wiring with an avalanche of photons and electrons. They are now transmitting data streams between circuits at the nanophotonic level. Speed: 40Gbps. Power supply: Just 1.5 volts. This video explain how it works.

The system is so fast and consumes so little because of electron avalanches: The receptor—called nanophotonic avalanche photodetector—catches the photon, which starts an electron chain reaction thanks to the properties of Germanium. What does this mean: Faster, smaller, and more power efficient devices. And the possibility of saying “nanophotonics” any time we want.

Nanophotonics!

[Twitter]

This Google Monster was created by Asaf Hanuka for an article about groups protesting Google’s plan to scan every book. I think it’s the way many thinks about its insatiable hunger, including myself. Well, actually, I see it like this:

[Tropical Toxic via TheDW]

The above may be pure Web 2.0 marketing drone corpospeak, but the truth is that, like Google and Apple, Microsoft’s CEO knows the future is the cloud and mobile computing.

You won’t find Steve Jobs’ favorite iPhone program in the App Store, but here’s a glimpse. This app costs several million dollars unless you are Google. Then you can enjoy it for free (while HTC foots the bill).

This world map of mobile browser usage is interesting. Some figures, like the iPhone/iPod’s presence in almost every major market of the world, are not surprising. Others are funny.

Why is Nigeria owned by Opera, with 94% of the market share? Or why Blackberry is not appearing in Canada, its home country? Even the Sony PSP is beating them there, while they are the dominant platform in Australia. The world is upside down. [iCrossing]