Author: Kyle VanHemert

Firefox Mobile crawled into its first pockets last night, going live on Maemo5. The mobile version retains the full awesomeness of the Awesome Bar and includes WeaveSync for keeping tabs, passwords, and bookmarks straight across desktop and mobile versions.

The Nokia N900 sports a lot of impressive unofficial achievements on its resume, like dual-booting (sort of) and playing Starcraft and Duke Nukem 3D. Now it gets the benefit of Firefox’s first o-fficial mobile version.

As mentioned above it comes with the Awesome Bar and synchronization capabilities as well as tabs, location-aware browsing and some add-ons. Flash support is experimental but can be turned on in the settings.

Firefox Mobile 1.0 is currently available for download. You can find out more at Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile page. [Mozilla via ZDNet]

Henry Dagg spent four years building this gigantic pin barrel harp, commissioned for a London garden. It’s finally finished but is too fragile for the outdoors. Listen to it play “A Long and Winding Road” and reflect on its fate.

Dagg, a former sound engineer for the BBC and self-styled sound sculptor, received a £56,000 grant in 2006 to build the solar powered instrument for the garden of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London. After four years of “blood, sweat and tears,” the instrument is complete, but Dagg is now seeking a permanent indoor home for the creation, which he calls the Sharpsichord.

The instrument is a steel monstrosity, with two huge gramophones and over 11,000 holes on a rotating cylinder for pegs that pluck the instrument’s tuned strings. Songs are programmed peg by peg, note by note, this rendition of the Beatles’ “Long and Winding Road” taking Dagg over a day to put together. In the video Dagg cranks the Sharpsichord to turn the cylinder but a solar powered motor is intended to power the finished device.

As you hear Dagg’s collaborator Chris Wood sing the the melancholy lines “many times I’ve been alone, and many times I’ve cried,” its hard not to think that they’re describing the hulking, homeless instrument itself. I just hope there’s a place for the Sharpsichord at the end of its long and winding road. [Telegraph via Neatorama]

If you can’t wait ’til spring, and you want to give your Wii-playing thumbs a rest with an analog stick, slide the $7 Magic Stick cover on your Wiimote. It ain’t pretty but it’ll do the trick. [Brando via Technabob]

Now that Avatar is officially the highest grossing movie of all time, it’s inevitable that studios will continue to push 3D as the new frontier of cinema. But actually filming in 3D is prohibitively expensive. Here’s how they fake it.

Not many directors share James Cameron’s obsession with three dimensional authenticity, and not many films have the budgets to support the directors who do. Filming in 3D requires the use of two cameras, barely offset, capturing all the action in tandem. The technology involved, and the people who know how to use it, come with a high price tag (to the tune of seven figures). So most of the 3D movies that will be coming out of Hollywood in coming months, including the two new Harry Potter films as well as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, create the effect in post-production.

Here’s the gist of it: graphic artists separate shots out into layers of depth, which can number anywhere from two layers for shots with simple shots to eight for shots with more complex compositions. Then, the objects in each layer are carefully traced, creating a topographical map of the scene. Here, the computer steps in, simulating the second camera’s perspective by generating another, slightly offset image. The images in the layers closest to the viewer are offset the most, creating the illusion of things popping off the screen, while the background is only offset slightly.

The more complicated the shot, the more work must be done by hand. With Tim Burton’s detailed worlds, you can bet that a whole team of artists were doing a whole lot of tracing. To read about the process in more detail, head over to Slate. [Slate’s Explainer]

Two events dominated discussion last week: the unveiling of Apple’s iPad and President Obama’s State of the Union address. Leading up to last Wednesday, many wondered if Apple’s event would overshadow Obama’s. On social media, that was certainly the case.

Monitoring Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs and the rest, social media analysts at Viralheat found over half a million mentions of the two happenings. Those mentions were overwhelmingly related to Apple’s new tablet computer.

As the infographic explains, however, even if Apple had the buzz, Obama brought the honey. Generally, 42% of Apple’s mentions were positive and 46% were indifferent, whereas 65% of his mentions approved of Obama’s address and only 19% were indifferent.

On one hand it’s surprising that the iPad generated so much more discussion than the State of the Union address, but in a sense it wasn’t a fair fight. Whereas Obama’s address is a routine, annual affair, the hype leading up to Apple’s event suggested it was going to be one of a kind. Perhaps that’s why the internet reacted so overwhelmingly with “:|” when the familiar-looking device was unveiled. [Mashable]

In today’s Remainders: Laughs! Technology bloggers have already chewed up and spit out the iPad over the last two frenzied days, and now the humor websites are having their say. But the real revelation here, folks, is the polar bear.

Meta
After days of deliberation, the college graduates at College Humor have decided on their revolutionary approach to mocking the iPad: metahumor. In this video, the CH team discuss how the iPad has fundamentally changed joke-making, allowing funny people everywhere to access jokes through sheer intuition rather than having to think them through. It’s truly a comedic miracle. HUAH. [College Humor]

iPad Gets VoIP
Here we have Dom Joly chatting away on his new iPad. This is from the Funny or Die British site, mind you, so the humor is of a more subtle, situational variety. Like the BBC version of The Office. But we must point out that in this instance the Yanks got to it first. [Funny or Die]

PeeWee Laughs
PeeWee Herman, like John Herrman before him, made an iPad mock-up and then made some jokes with it. I’m not quite old enough to be part of the generation that appreciates PeeWee’s weirdness. I’m just creeped out by it. [Funny or Die]

Bearrorism
Ho-ly shit. Thanks to Aziz Ansari, we watched this introduction video for the Alaska Nanooks hockey team. And then we watched it again, and again, and again. Here are just a few of the things involved in this very special video: hockey sticks made of electricity; polar bears committing unspeakable acts of terrorism; hockey in space. I won’t spoil any more. But suffice it to say that the Nanooks intro video the heir apparent to Chris Dane Owens’ “Shine” for masterpiece CGI alternate universe video lulz. [Aziz is Bored]

If you want to give your time lapse videos a nice, smooth pan, try looking next to the pans. Using only an old school kitchen timer and a Go Pro camera, a Make reader whipped up this neat video.

The simplest hacks are the best kind, and this $7 solution is definitely satisfying by that measure. By the way, did you see what I did up there with those “pans”? [Make]

This impressive Lost case mod incorporates a few disparate elements of everyone’s favorite time-jumping mystery island. You’ve got the whole jungle thing going on and a Dharma Initiative-flavored octagonal shape. Oh, and it can take down airplanes flying overhead.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that some Brazilian Lost fanatics had the geek know-how to put together their own computer, but you have to appreciate the design sensibility and attention to detail exhibited by this particular mod. The 1977 Dharma Initiative team photo tucked inside is one such loving touch, but the real icing on the cake is the video screen on the outside that plays Dr. Marvin Candle’s introduction videos.

The only problem? You have to use the Lost computer every 108 minutes or the world ends. [LostMod on Flickr]

In today’s Remainders: The Old World. We visit Michael Dell in Switzerland, showing off the Dell Mini 5. We swing by Germany, to see one baaaaad reaction to the iPad and 10,000 watts of homemade light-porn. Last stop: Russia!

It’ll Be Out In a Couple Months
TechCrunch caught up with Michael Dell at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where Dell was sporting fingerless gloves (as well as the forthcoming Dell Mini 5). We’ve already seen the Android-powered Mini 5 and got to play with it a bit, so there’s not too much to get excited about in this clip. But it does present us with some small pleasures. One of them being Dell’s suggestion that the Mini 5 will be coming to the States in a matter of months. The other is how awkward things get when the interviewer asks what processor is inside the Mini 5. The video cuts off pretty abruptly at the end, so further awkwardness is left to the viewer’s imagination. I’m cringing just thinking about it. [CrunchGear]

iMeme
If you thought Adam Frucci was hard on the iPad, wait until you see how Hitler responded to Apple’s newest creation. As usual, the Fuhrer’s expectations were exceedingly high and his disappointment proved inevitable. Okay, okay, there have been hundreds of these—the director of the original film himself, who finds them “hilarious,” estimates he’s seen 145 of them—but there is something about seeing one of modern history’s greatest villains reacting to one of history’s most anticipated gadgets in one of the internet’s greatest meme’s that just feels so right. [YouTube]

Sight For Sore Eyes
If you’ve ever wondered what a homemade array of nearly 200 florescent tubes totalling over 10,000 watts looks like, here’s your answer: terribly, blindingly bright. Its German creators claim this Arduino-running monstrosity is part of a giant scrolling text installation that is going up in Berlin tomorrow, but I fear there’s some more nefarious purpose for this awful creation. [Hack A Day]

Back In The U.S.S.R.
The richest man in all of Russia, Mikhail Prokhorov, has big plans. For one thing, he’s trying to buy the New Jersey Nets. For another, he’s developing a new high-tech city car, a venture detailed by the image you see to the left. The automobile will be built by Yarovit Motors, looks like a giant loaf of bread, involves iPhones, and will apparently be driven by the creepy robots from iRobot. Prokhorov hopes to sell the car for just $12,500, but something about the weird Tomorrowland aesthetic of that picture makes it hard for me to believe that this project will get off the ground. Or on the ground, as the case may be. [Luxist]

British artist Nick Gentry‘s paintings give long-forgotten floppy disks a new lease on life. They’re still storage media, just in a much more literal sense.

At some point recently, you’ve probably uncovered an old box of videos, cassettes, and floppies in the basement and thought to yourself, “what am I supposed to do with these?” It turns out you just weren’t thinking hard enough.

Painting on canvases comprised of 3.5″ floppy disks and VHS tapes, Nick Gentry puts these bygone forms of storage to use in his art.

To see more of his incredible work, check out the artist’s website. [Nick Gentry]

A few weeks ago we heard rumors that the Motorola Shadow could earn the distinction of Nexus Two. Today Motorola confirmed that they are working with Google on a new phone to be sold directly to consumers.

There’s no telling if the Droidesque Shadow is the device in question, or if Motorola’s will even be Google’s next flagship device, but during an earnings call today Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha confirmed that the company is working on a “direct to consumer device with Google.”

Jha didn’t offer any details on the forthcoming phone, but his statement serves as confirmation of two things: Google’s Nexus One wasn’t a one-off experiment and Motorola is involved in one of its successors. [Electronista]

Lexon recently announced a new line of sustainably powered gadgets that are decidedly down to Earth. That is, they’re made from bamboo and maize bio-plastics. And let me tell you, corn has never looked better.

If you’re in the market for a new calculator, alarm clock, or FM radio, why wouldn’t you want it to be made from corn and bamboo? Especially when it looks this handsome.

Not only are the devices made with sustainable materials, they’re powered sustainably too: the clocks grab up energy from the sun and the radio has a fold-out crank to get its juice. From the looks of things, that radio doubles as a portable speaker for MP3 players and the like. Just don’t bring it around any pandas. [Core77]

In 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set off to become the first men to climb Mount Everest. Among the gear they packed was a Vest Pocket Kodak camera. They disappeared. Today, a search for their camera could rewrite history.

It was nearly thirty years later, in 1954, that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay successfully scaled Everest and won history’s distinction as the first mountaineers to do so. But Mallory and Irvine’s fate remained a mystery, and the possibility that they reached the summit endured. Mallory’s body was found in 1999 but didn’t provide any conclusive answers on the fate of his expedition.

Now, Everest historian Tom Holzel believes he has pinpointed the location of Andrew Irvine’s body, showing up as an “oblong blob” on high-resolution photographs of the mountain. Recovering Irvine’s body might mean recovering his Kodak camera, as well as the film that could fill in the blanks on their historic climb.

Holzel plans to launch an expedition to investigate the blob and, he hopes, recover the camera next month. In the event they do find the 90 year old Vest Pocket Kodak, Holzel has prepared an extensive guide on how to handle the very delicate, very important gadget. [Scientific American via Boing Boing]

According to Rodney Charters, director of photography on 24, print media might not be the only thing Apple’s tablet is saving in coming months. Charters cheerfully Tweeted that Jack Bauer might wield the ubergadget later this season on 24.

The production team on the show, which recently aired the fifth episode of its eighth season, is apparently working behind the scenes to outfit its hero with Apple’s forthcoming device. This morning Charters announced:

Hmmmm looks like we may get an iSlate into Jacks hands for Ep 20 getting giddy with excitement

and later updated, with a bit more certainty

Got a bit too excited probably more likely Episode 22 but Apple provided fingers crossed

In any event, it’s a testament to the hype surrounding the device that it’s even managed to make its way into the dreams of fictional characters. I’m sure Jack, too, is giddy with excitement. [Rodney Charters]

In today’s Remainders, the tablet-confirming Tweet from a German retailer that wasn’t really from a German retailer, a video of the Air Force smushing faces with seven Gs, an iPhone app that keeps track of all those rumors, and more!

Markt Up
This morning, technology websites were buzzing with news that the Apple tablet’s price had been leaked by a German retailer. The source: a Tweet from German electronics giant Media Markt which claimed the tablet would be available on March 1 for roughly $600 with a T-Mobile contract or $1000 without. This seemed fishy to us. Why would a German retailer be privy to all of this information on Apple’s supersecret device? Well, a few hours later our skepticism was confirmed: a Media Markt representative confirmed that the Twitter account was not an official one. The real question here: who’s getting their kicks pretending to be a big German electronics store on Twitter? [MacRumors]

Barf Bag
Today Wired dug up this little gem that reminded us why we didn’t pursue our dreams of joining the Air Force. Though the video is nearly half a decade old, and thus not quite fresh enough to warrant a post, there is something truly timeless about watching men and women of all shapes and sizes contorted into entirely different shapes and sizes by the face-smushing, mind-melting, puke-inducing power of seven Gs. [Wired]

Scary Berry
If the unicorn is the iPhone’s spirit animal in the great Gadgetverse, this monster is surely the Blackberry’s. [iRumors
Love playing the rumors game but having trouble keeping track of them all? There’s an app for that! David Weiss’s Prediction was approved by Apple today and lets you to stay on top of all the latest speculation from the palm of your hand. Even better, it lets you log your take on each rumor so you can see how your gadget prescience plays out in the long run. If that’s a little too high tech for you, Weiss put together a handy PDF of all of the prevailing Apple tablet rumors that you can print out and fill out before tomorrow’s event. [Daring Fireball]

In today’s Remainders, a buncha dreamers: too many people read too much into a fake Apple tablet ad; DARPA, having loved Avatar, casts about for 3D surveillance; a new B&O TV that will cost more than $10,000, and more.

Ad Busters
A few very serious people have been taking this very fake Apple tablet ad very seriously. Why? Who knows. It comes from the very heart of tablet render fakery, nowhereelse.fr. It has USB ports in the back that would necessitate a device twice as thick as the one shown. It looks faker than Heidi Montag. Let’s just move along. [YouTube]

War in 3D
DARPA, comprised of some of the more fanciful minds in the Pentagon, is seeking prototypes for “advanced high-resolution 3-D imaging technology” for the next generation of surveillance systems. The push for three dimensions comes as a response to current limitations of video surveillance technologies, specifically their inability to provide viewers with a sense of depth. Current video feeds have been likened to “looking through a soda straw,” which definitely does not sound like a very ideal surveillance situation. Still, it’s easier to dream in 3D than to make it a reality. If it took the motion picture dictator pictured to the left some twelve years to realize his three-dimensional vision, we don’t have high hopes that our bureaucracy will sort this one out any time soon. [Wired]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Bang & Olufsen specializes in designing products that everyone wants but no one wants to buy. Why? Because they’re prohibitively expensive. We don’t expect the BeoVision 10-46, a 46″, LED-backlit HDTV with built-in speakers, to be any different. B&O hasn’t announced a price yet, but the 40″ predecessor went for a cool $10,000. Riiiiiight. [Engadget]

Outer Space, Inter Net
This has been a great week for fans of internet in space. First some astronauts tweeted from the ISS. Now, the Department of Defense is beginning a three month test of a new satellite with a dedicated internet router. The router, launched aboard the Intelsat IS-14 satellite last November, is part of a program by Cisco dubbed IRIS, or Internet Protocol Routing in Space. The satellite and IRIS system make military communications for the U.S. and NATO much more flexible, allowing space-bound data to be rerouted more efficiently and directly. All good and well for the military, but I can’t help but wonder when someone’s going to launch a satellite that makes my internet faster? Is that wrong of me? Oh well. [PopSci]

Neither Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium nor the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus holds any sight quite as bizarre as Arthur von Poppel’s Nautilus One Man Band Submarine. [Nautilus One Man Band via Dark Roasted Blend]

Developed by Microsoft and University of California Berkeley, the Pictionaire table uses overhead cameras to make digitize physical objects, allowing you to manipulate real stuff with all the intuitive, touchy-feely goodness you’ve come to expect of touchscreen tables.

The table, an adapted version of Microsoft Surface, is nearly six feet long and designed to bring collaboration to touchscreen tables, just like Pictionary brought collaboration to drawing, I guess?

Regardless of the silly name, the concept is pretty cool. A DSLR hanging overhead recognizes objects placed on the table by their size and shape. It then photographs that object and feeds the digital copy onto the table, where it can be resized, sorted and spun around intuitively with your fingers.

Pictionaire still looks a little rough around the edges, but by rolling the ability to scan and copy physical objects into touchscreen tables, it brings Microsoft Surface technology in touch with the real world. [New Scientist via Slash Gear]

Panasonic’s new Lumix point and shoots were introduced earlier this month at CES and they caught our eye with their skinny design. We’ve always found Lumix to be nice gear, so we’re glad to see that the FH and FP series cameras are available at several price points, from $110 for the F2 up to $229.95 for the FP3, with the rest all falling somewhere in between.

The cameras are slated to ship in mid-February. For full details, check out the press release below.

PANASONIC ANNOUNCES PRICING FOR 2010 LUMIX DIGITAL CAMERAS, FOCUSING ON STYLE, FUNCTION AND CONVENIENCE

SECAUCUS, NJ (January 25, 2010) – Panasonic today announced pricing for its new line of LUMIX digital cameras, which include the LUMIX FH-, FP- and F- Series – all which will be available in mid-February.

The LUMIX FH-Series including the FH1, FH3 and FH20 are all slim, pocket-size models that pack a powerful 28mm wide-angle lens. All of these models also record High Definition video and feature Panasonic’s hallmark, iA (Intelligent Auto) mode, a suite of technologies that engage automatically – with no setting changes needed by the user. The LUMIX FH1 will be available for a suggested retail price of $159.95, the LUMIX FH3 for $179.95 and the LUMIX FH20 for $199.95.

The FP-Series, featuring the LUMIX FP1 and the LUMIX FP3, have a 4x optical zoom with a folded optics design, making the camera design stylish and sleek. The series highlights a newly-adopted lens cover which protects the lens and also serves as the camera’s power switch. The FP3 features an intuitive 3.0″ touch-screen LCD for easy-to-use operation. New to the FP-Series is High Definition (HD) video recording capability allowing for both beautiful still and motion images. The FP1 will be available for $149.95 and the FP3 for $229.95.

In the LUMIX F-Series, the LUMIX F3 and LUMIX F2 have been designed with simplicity, style and performance in mind. Both models record High Definition video and are equipped with 28mm wide angle lenses and an Extra Optical Zoom function to extend zoom power from 4x to 7.8x. Both models also feature Intelligent ISO Control, which prevents the blurring of a moving subject; Face Detection, which helps to clearly capture registered faces; and Intelligent Scene Selector, which automatically selects one of six scene modes that best fits the shooting
situation. The LUMIX F3 will be available for $129.95 and the LUMIX F2 for $109.95.

For more information on all Panasonic LUMIX digital camera models, please visit www.panasonic.com/lumix.

About Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company
Based in Secaucus, N.J., Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company (PCEC), is a Division of Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal North American subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation (NYSE: PC) and the hub of Panasonic’s U.S. marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. In its commitment to provide consumers with extensive imaging resources, Panasonic LUMIX established the Digital Photo Academy, a series of nationwide workshops designed to instruct consumers how to optimize the features on their digital cameras and produce high-quality photos. Panasonic is pledged to practice prudent, sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources and protect our environment through the company’s Eco Ideas programs. Company information for journalists is available at www.panasonic.com/pressroom.

For more than 20 years, Panasonic has been proud to support the Olympic Movement as an Official Worldwide Olympic Partner in the Audio and Visual Equipment category and, beginning in 2009, in the Digital Imaging category as well. Panasonic has also renewed its partnership with the International Olympic Committee for an additional eight years through the 2016 Summer Games. For more information, visithttp://panasonic.net/olympic/.

We’ve long been fans of Oppo, makers of high-quality, universal Blu-ray players, but that quality always came at a price. Their new BDP-80, announced today, plays Blu-ray discs, DVDs, SACDs, MKVs, MP3s, and more for only $289.

The last we heard from Oppo, their BDP-83 was getting near-perfect reviews. The only problem was the price: $500. Now, you can bring a high performance Oppo player to your home theater for under $300.

The BDP-80 shaves off some of its more expensive older brother’s higher end features, like 24p DVD conversion and in/out IR ports, but it still looks like it’s a great option if you’re looking for a high-quality, versatile BRD player. To check out a full comparison chart or place your order head to Oppo’s site. [Oppo via Engadget]