Eco Factor: High voltage charger for electric cars.
Siemens Energy Sector in Denmark is working on the EDISON project that involves the development of new charging technology that will enable EV owners to recharge their green rides in as little as six minutes. The system works by raising charging power to as much as 300KW to replicate the familiar filling up at a gas station in about six minutes.
This New Year 2010, Ryan Seacrest will do the Times Square New Year countdown for 2010 and Times Square’s New Year theme for 2010 is “Let there be courage”.
2010th year of the Anno Domini or Common Era epoch, the 10th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century, and the 1st of the 2010s decade.
Since there is a snow in Times Square New York today, I wonder if a lot of Americans will go to Times Square to celebrate New Year 2010 or they will juststay in their homes and watch the Times SquareNew Years Eve 2010 celebration in their Tvs.
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The ABC has a report on how the energy crisis of the 1970’s set in train Australia’s modern day coal dependency – Australia’s coal addiction set in train 30 years ago.
As the world battles to secure a low-carbon future, secret cabinet documents from 1979 show that before global warming was on the radar, Canberra acted to lock in Australia’s coal-based energy future.
It was the year of the second oil shock, when Iranian oil supplies slumped and crude prices skyrocketed on the back of Iran’s Islamic revolution and nations scrambled for policies to reduce their dependence on foreign oil.
Global politics were volatile in 1979 and included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of that year, which was also seen in significant part through the lens of energy security.
US president Jimmy Carter made his view clear in a speech in January the following year. “Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force,” he said to deafening and repeated applause.
But the fallout from Iran’s political upheaval was the more direct threat to energy security.
In January 1979, the Shah of Iran had fled his country, followed in February by the tumultuous return from exile of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who embarked on the Islamic revolution.
The chaos of the transition saw Iran’s oil industry grind to a virtual halt, and even when supplies resumed, they were at much lower levels to which the world was accustomed. Global oil prices soared with the supply constraint. OPEC countries reaped the financial windfall and in turn restricted output, further cashing in.
In the West, there was panic and stockpiling. Crude prices rose by about 250 per cent. The talk was of reducing reliance on foreign oil.
For the Fraser government in Australia, that set in train policy considerations which in some areas echo responses to the imperative of climate change. But other considerations stand in contrast to energy-policy thinking in the current context, according to 1979 cabinet documents released by the National Archives of Australia.
“In June, cabinet approved a range of measures to reduce dependence on imported oil,” Dr Jim Stokes, historical consultant to the National Archives of Australia, told Radio Australia.
“These included a reduction in fuel octane ratings, suspension of tougher standards on lead additives and vehicle emissions and encouragement of the use of LPG.”
Daily Random Recipe
INGREDIENTS:
Vegetables and grain dishes alike take on a distinctly Oriental air when served with this flavourful sauce.
“Found these recipes in an old book of my mum’s from the 70’s (her vegetarian phase as she calls it…) – ‘Laurel’s Kitchen – A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition’. Lots of good, simple, interesting food!”
The “Red Bull: New Year. No Limits” will be televised on ESPN and ESPNHD on Dec. 31 at 11 PM EST. Tune in to see if the Travis Pastrana New Years Eve 2009 stunt lives up to all the hype!
“Given the venue, the atmosphere, the hype, and the steps we’ve taken to create a unique environment, this party will be truly one of a kind,” he said. “We are very excited for Thursday evening.”
Pastrana is a 26-year-old former motocross and supercross star, who has a passion for racing. He crashed one of the cars during initial tests but is still optimistic he can pull off the daredevil feat. Pastrana noted that they put a whole lot of Imprezas through testing and ultimately modified the car he’ll be using with $250,000 worth of new upgrades. Hopefully that pays off and helps Mr. Pastrana make his jump record target of 171 feet.
Pastrana will start at the Pine Street Pier in Long Beach, California and take off on a ramp, where he will go about 40 or 50 feet up above water, then land on a floating barge below. There will be rescuer crews in the water below should Pastrana fall short in his New Year’s even jump attempt.
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One of the great things about living in this decade is that men and women no longer need to live with hair loss as a fact of life. These days you can always look for an effective hair loss baldness treatment product. You should remember though that just with any other product on earth, hair loss treatments can also be scams. Here are some good tips to help prevent getting scammed.
Check Website Data
These hair loss baldness treatment products are also found online. Before you blow your money on a product, check its website first. A hair loss baldness treatment product website should have a clear and comprehensive account of the causes of hair loss and how its product ingredients can address these causes. Furthermore, the site data should appeal to your logic and sense of reason. Do the pieces of information make sense? Is the solution presented in an organized, complete and sensible manner?
Perform Your Own Research
Don’t just take a manufacturer’s word for it. Before you buy a hair loss baldness treatment product, cross check what you have gathered from a website. Perform your own research. Look for reputable and reliable online scientific sites and journals. This is one way to see if a product site truly has the right information and if their solution has a reasonable probability of working.
You should also visit several product sites. This will give you an opportunity to compare different solutions with each other and settle on the one that you feel would be perfect for you. This is also a chance for you to compare product prices.
Read Reviews
You can also determine the effectiveness and general popularity of a hair loss baldness treatment product by reading product reviews and ratings. These are useful tools created by real consumers and product users. This is one way for you to be able to gather first hand information on what people have experienced with a product.
Be careful though as some hair loss baldness treatment product reviews are ac actually manufacturer generated. They may seem like unbiased reviews but are actually really in favor of a product. Real reviews would contain both the pros and cons of a hair loss baldness treatment product. You could also join interactive forums sites where a lot of users are more spontaneous.
Look for Contact Information
When you enter a hair loss baldness treatment product site, one of the first things that you should look for is the contact information. Scam sites have bogus or fake contact numbers and addresses. If there is a toll free number, try calling the number and asking the person on the other line real questions about hair loss and about the product.
Check Policies
Of course, you may be tempted to buy a product with money-back guarantee. What some consumers do not realize is that this may just be a marketing strategy. In the end, it may not be so easy to get your money back. There may be some hidden conditions that you may not have been aware of. Meticulously check, read and analyze their return policies.
Searching for the hair loss baldness treatment that works for you? Buy the herbal hair loss remedy that works for your hair type.
The “Red Bull: New Year. No Limits” will be televised on ESPN and ESPNHD on Dec. 31 at 11 PM EST. Tune in to see if the Travis Pastrana New Years Eve 2009 stunt lives up to all the hype!
Pastrana is a 26-year-old former motocross and supercross star, who has a passion for racing. He crashed one of the cars during initial tests but is still optimistic he can pull off the daredevil feat. Pastrana noted that they put a whole lot of Imprezas through testing and ultimately modified the car he’ll be using with $250,000 worth of new upgrades. Hopefully that pays off and helps Mr. Pastrana make his jump record target of 171 feet.
Pastrana will start at the Pine Street Pier in Long Beach, California and take off on a ramp, where he will go about 40 or 50 feet up above water, then land on a floating barge below. There will be rescuer crews in the water below should Pastrana fall short in his New Year’s even jump attempt.
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We can also watch the ball drop in Times Square with My Life on the D-List star Kathy Griffin, who will cohost CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live With Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin at 11 pm. (Or watch the live stream online at CNN.com).
The Star Press will provide live-streaming video of tonight’s downtown festivities, which will include a ceremonial ball-drop, courtesy of the Muncie/Delaware Robotics Team. The team designed and built the ball and will drop it from a crane at midnight.
The ball drop will be the centerpiece of First Friday at Midnight, an event co-sponsored by NewTown and the Cherry Blossom Festival. Many of the typical draws of First Friday will be taking place, in addition to a live music street party, Hattaway said. The event is free to the general public.
American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest will host Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve live from Times Square. Ryan isn’t the only reality personality who will help to ring in the New Year. Former American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry will be performing four of his hit songs before the ball drops.
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You can tune in here for the live stream coverage of Times Square that will be airing in the New Year’s Eve Countdown and celebration. Australia did a great job on there Fireworks display and let’s see if the Americans will pull this one through in a very beautiful way.
We can also watch the ball drop in Times Square with My Life on the D-List star Kathy Griffin, who will cohost CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live With Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin at 11 pm. (Or watch the live stream online at CNN.com).
New Year’s Eve Celebration in the US in New York Times Square. The main highlights will be the grand ball drop , this Great Ball in Times Square is said to be one of the most cheapest made in their history because they didn’t use any LEDs.
“It started there [at the AMAS], and then, no kidding, Marc [Anthony] and Jennifer came over to my house and literally Walked through what it would be like inTimes Square , and now we’ve got a stage built [in that spot in my house]. ” “That’s exactly what happened. It’s a small house!” Seacrest joked.
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Thanks to everyone who read and supported us in 2009. Everyone will tell you that they have big plans for 2010, so we’ll spare you the platitude. But we will promise more useful BlackBerry information this year, and the year after, and the year after that. Happy New Year everyone.
This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
This post originated at BBGeeks.com – home to all things Blackberry! Also a great source of info about AT&T BlackBerry.
You might be able to squeeze a little more storage into those Blu-ray discs soon. Sony and Panasonic have been working on increasing the maximum capacity per-layer from 25 to 33.4GB, and the new version might be ready for market in the near future.
Hopefully this doesn’t mean you’ll have to buy another drive, and there’s one hell of a lot of science content involved (regarding something known as an i-MLSE), but the gist is that there is new technology coming.
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It’s not quite as endearing as the (also terrifying) BigDog, but the OmniTread robot does seem pretty useful. That is, if you don’t need to go fast. The bot is a specialist in navigating rubble and small spaces, and could help locate people trapped under collapsed buildings. There is a risk of them running in terror, but if they’re pinned it shouldn’t be a problem.
It’s designed by roboticists at the University of Michigan, and right now there aren’t any production plans. But if it were to prove itself in a quake or other disaster, they might find themselves with a government contract right quick.
[via Coolest Gadgets and TechEBlog]
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I spent this decade hunting for the perfect gadget. I never thought I would end up with tech as good as this. But it’s not the tech that interests me the most anymore.
In 2000, I was just another kid out of college in Boston escaping to the Golden State’s climate and opportunity. The perfect job didn’t present itself for six long months; four months later, it burst with the bubble.
It’s not important what the job was. I was fired not just because the company was eating shit but also because I spent extraordinary amounts of company time online, obsessively reading about games and gadgets. That was fate, it seems.
My toys were nothing fancy; a leftover Dell Inspiron laptop with a 266 MHz processor, maybe 256MB of RAM, and no 3D graphics; a Motorola Startac variant on T-Mobile (300 minutes, no data plan—can you imagine!—or even text messages).
I don’t think I even had a portable media player, playing Napster MP3s only at home on Winamp. For video games I had a first generation PlayStation, games rented from Kosmo and copied with a CD burner, played on an Aiwa 24-inch TV that was built around a Sony Trinitron CRT tube. At the time, these were important brands.
Since then the companies that made the gadgets I loved started looking old-fashioned, following that simple-minded formula of chasing more MHz, more pixels.
Then: iPod.
And I ignored it. It was pretty but I couldn’t afford one. It almost seemed stupid, since lots of other MP3 players advertised more features for less cash. I didn’t own a Mac, nor did I plan to. It was white—and who wanted a white gadget? Silver was my kind of cool. Fake plastic silver, even. Anything with a metallic flake in its finish. I didn’t get it, conceptually or literally.
Remember Creative? They made better stuff than Apple for less money, and I wanted one of their players. Today, I don’t know if Creative even makes MP3 players. I use iTunes and Amazon.com for music buying. I bet you do, too. It took more than a few failed experiments, but a lot of us are actually buying music again.
Digital changed cameras, too.
My first digital camera was a Kodak, because Kodak was the brand for imaging even through the late ’90s, before the Canon and Nikon train barreled past Rochester, leaving Kodak a ghost town. Kodak was invested in the past.
This was the decade I got into PC gaming hardware—then got out. I wasn’t even that into the games, but loved slapping cheap components into tall steel Taiwanese cases, looping wires through sharp-edged bays for fans, lights, optical and hard drives.
A year into this habit, I realized I was in an pointless upgrade loop. I’d get a few more frames per second out of a new video card, but the games weren’t more fun at higher frames-rates or resolutions, especially when everyone got stuck playing Counterstrike for two years straight. (I was still playing consoles, but my fervor was waning; I waited in line for a PS2 and only to collapse onto my bed with the box, too tired to open it.)
One sweltering day my PC suffered a fatal crash and lost a lot of data. That was that. I gave in to Mactardedness—and not because I loved Apple, but because I hated inconvenience. Maybe using a Mac would provoke less cursing. I even got an iPod. Slowly, my brain released its desire to tinker, and I used my rebuilt PC less and less.
I noticed Friendster. Joined. It got slow.
Joined MySpace. It got filled with junk.
Joined that Facebook thing because Nick Denton made me. Man is it ugly. I didn’t log back in for a few years.
Signed up for Twitter. No one I know in real life uses this thing. Didn’t sign in for a few years. I didn’t get the social web, at first. Google—not other people—was my door to the internet.
Got a PS3. Turned it on for Metal Gear. Squinted at menus. It asked me to log in for its store, but there was nothing in there. Beat Metal Gear twice, turned it off. Dust looks like a matte finish on a PS3.
Got an Xbox 360. Added my friends. Liked knowing where my friends were and what they were doing. Liked killing my friends on Xbox, even though PS3 has faster, quieter, nicer hardware. I guess I am not as anti-social as I thought—as long as being social involves assassination. (Twitter would be better if you could use it to murder your friends.)
Bought HD-DVD. Blu-ray won the battle the last physical media format ever. Now I just subscribe to 15 different movie services. (Wait, is that better?)
Ten years ago, Dell was shaking things up because it sold through the internet for cheap. Now they’re shrinking. You can’t tell the difference between an Inspiron or Latitude or XPS with a 15-inch screen. People who shop for computers now often look to Apple simply because it’s easier to pick a size—small, medium, or large—and then pick the expensive or the cheaper version. (Do you want fries with that?) Dell’s branding and model line up is an American heartland clusterfuck.
Sony stopped cooking up so many proprietary—often imaginary—formats, but only because they’d lost. The company that made the Walkman now makes iPod docks. Sony’s hardware continues to be fantastic, but does it matter? They’re the only gadget company with a music label and movie studio. Can anyone name the Sony iTunes alternative? Does anyone talk to their friends about their love for the TX-1234xZR? Or its cousin without Bluetooth, the TX-1234xZRnbt? Or the TX-1234xZRnbt2xz with an extra 2X zoom? Sony’s branding and model line up is a Japanese megacorp clusterfuck.
For an all-too-brief moment, T-mobile was hip because they were cheap, had a phone called the Hiptop, and Catherine Zeta Jones was hotter than Ma Bell. You could get your problems taken care of in one call. Also: pink logo. Then we all got phones capable of doing real things that needed real pipes. AT&T was convinced by Apple to do some cheap flat rate thing on that iPhone. Sorry TMO.
Apple came back. It was Steve, a man who lost the first round 20 years ago and came back to fight the mobile war with all the old lessons from the PC war in pocket. Design, manufacturing, sourcing of components, marketing and maybe most importantly, software. He had almost everything under control. They went Intel, declaring that hardware wasn’t the thing that defined a better computer.
And, this little thing called iPhone. We had an email debate at Gizmodo about calling this decade the “iDecade”. Naming a decade after a gadget, no matter how great it is, makes me want to vomit. So does calling the iPhone the gadget of the year. It just seems too easy, too cliche.
But it was the one. It has been the culmination of decades of development across countless industries, all coming together into a single little slab of near-perfection. After a decade filled with so many aborted, ill-conceived clones and ideas tuned more for profit than progress, the iPhone was a rare gem. Just because it’s obvious doesn’t make it less true.
For years, the received wisdom was that specialized devices would always continue to progress at a rate that made all-in-one devices poor solutions.
Here are the things replaced by my iPhone: Mapping and GPS; point-and-shoot camera; Flip camcorder; Game Boy; calculator (okay, I didn’t carry this around ever); calendar; organizer; any book-of-the-moment; phone; Playboy; newspaper; notebook; voice recorder; iPod; video player (can you believe this was a whole gadget category just three years ago?); weatherman; TV; wrist watch; radio; alarm clock; compass; pedometer; musical instrument; Bible, medical journals, dictionary, any reference book. Sometimes, even my laptop. Put together enough “good enough” solutions, it turns out, and they begin to outweigh even the specialized devices.
Thank goodness it’s looking like it’s not going to just be the iPhone. (Although credit where it’s due; Apple pushed the whole industry forward by five years, easily, if judged by the rate the rest of the industry was moving.) Whether Android, Palm, maybe even Windows Mobile if Microsoft really buckles down, little portable internet computers with an ever-expanding array of senses we have (save taste/smell, but just wait) and little applications that make them more and more useful, are finally pushing gadgetry forward in ways we never fully expected.
None of this happened randomly. Those who ended up on top had luck and timing and resources. But why they came out ahead was predicated by several things, naturally highlighted in hindsight.
The four rings of gadgetdom in the 2000s were design, the social internet, powerful but inexpensive hardware, and a real software ecosystem.
Only five companies have a shot at nailing the home, mobile and work hat trick, from software and hardware to internet: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony and Samsung. They’re all failing in some way. Apple’s cloud services are a joke. Sony can still make great hardware but have no idea how people want to use it. Samsung can’t write code. With Android, Google can’t figure out if they want to be Microsoft or Apple. Counterintuitive as it may seem, I think Microsoft has a real shot at winning the next decade, if they listen to their entertainment group who have figured out how to do a platform right.
Little companies don’t really have a shot at this level of unified, do-all gadget greatness. The age of the garage hardware start-up belongs to the web generation, not the next generation of gadget makers. Smartphones have become analogous to PCs of the ’90s. There’s little room for a new PC platform to come online, but a vast potential space for start-ups to use the big platforms as a springboard with new accessories and software.
Gizmodo has undergone fundamental changes in the last few years. It’s really hard to get excited about copy cat hardware made from the same underlying chips and parts, often in the same factory. Any blog that covers press release after press release indiscriminately is doing readers a serious disservice instead of focusing on what makes a real difference to gadgetry: content, social context and applications. What gets us excited are evolving operating systems that pump the hardware full of new life and devices that continuously inhale new movies, music, and messages from friends through the internet.
Right now, I’m in Japan. It’s already 2010. When I look ahead at this year, it’s easy to see why the anticipation for tablets is boiling over, even though the idea of tablets, like smartphones five years ago, is perhaps old hat. Now that we’ve seen what happens when companies really nail a unified smartphone, we’re projecting our hopes on the generation of tablets to come.
The best tech, as it approaches a zenith of purpose and polish, becomes invisible. It gets out of the way of the user, becomes just a portal to…stuff. One does not give much thought to a faucet as long as it provides water. Finally, at the end of this decade, we’ve had a taste of what it’s like when network capability, slick software, sensors and—most importantly—content and communication come together in such tiny, shrinking hardware.
It’s not shiny things that captivate me anymore; it’s what they shine.
So here’s a somewhat interesting gadget. Instead of converting a PS3 into a hand-held device, a crafty modder named techknott built a custom transmitter. The transmitter allows a player to not only control their PS3 remotely, but also to view the output on a small video screen.
Essentially, you’re combining a controller with a wireless video device, and a small LCD screen. Sounds simple right? Well, it’s might be simple, but looking at the fabrication quality in the video, it’s obviously something that required quite a bit of time and effort.
[via GEARFUSE]
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If you live in a northern climate, tomorrow marks the first real day of hunkering down for the cold, cold winter with nothing to look forward to until spring. We used to have the new season of Deadwood starting up in February, but HBO killed it.
Now there’s nothing. If you’re down with old-school movies, though, Hammacher’s selling 100 – count ‘em – 100 action films spanning 24 double-sided DVDs for $45.
These are movies from the 1920s through the 1990s, when men were men and the women were too. There’s also a collection of 100 Westerns available for $45 as well.
The 100 Classic Action Films [Hammacher Schlemmer]
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Hold on to your hats, folks! It’s a doozy. Wait… I’m being told it’s actually a minor, but significant, change to an Acer Netbook, and one we already heard about. Sorry.
Well, as long as you’re here: it seems that the popular Acer Aspire One, a perfectly decent netbook if I ever saw one, is going to be sporting the new Atom N450 processor. This is the newest Atom, and it lowers wattage while integrating graphics. So you can expect slightly better battery life and better performance, although the clock speed is still hanging out at the same old 1.66GHz.
Good for Acer, but hold on to your wallets. We expect pretty much every netbook maker have similar specs after the next week or so. That’s not so long to wait, is it? Just chill a bit, watch our CES coverage, and then decide which is the best afterwards. I’m betting Doug is just itching to get hands-on with all these things. He’s like that.
Here are the full specs from the press release. Should go for $300 MSRP, less of course on the strizzle.
Acer Aspire One AO532h
• Intel® Atom(TM) Processor N450 (1.66GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 667MHz FSB)
• 10.1″ WSVGA Acer CrystalBrite(TM) LED-backlit Display
• Mobile Intel® NM10 Express Chipset
• Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
• 1024MB DDR2 667MHz Memory
• 160GB(2) 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
• Acer InviLink(TM) Nplify(TM) 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED®
• 10/100 Fast Ethernet LAN (RJ-45)
• Built-in Webcam
• Two Built-in Stereo Speakers
• Multi-Gesture Touchpad
• 3 – USB 2.0 Ports
• 6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh)
• 2.76 lbs. | 1.25 kg
• 10.17” (W) x7.28” (D) x .99” (H)
• Windows® 7 Starter
• Three stylish colors: Onyx Blue, Garnet Red and Silver Matrix.
• MSRP: $299.99
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Pardon me, miss? I’d just like to tell you that I think your hat is fly. Dope, even. Too bad you’ll never remember my face. Memorize it now and then lose me forever. Unless, of course, you’ve somehow got a camcorder hidden in that thing! That’s unlikely, as your hat is far too stylish to be a technology product.
The joke’s on me, because this hat DOES have a camcorder hidden inside it. The future! All for $55 from Brando. There’s 4GB of storage, 640×480 resolution recording at 27 (???) frames per second, and a keychain remote control.
You use the remote to start and stop recording, at which point the hat vibrates to let you know it’s working. Yes, it vibrates. Again, this is the future.
Spy Camera Camcorder Cap with Vibration and Remote Control [Brando]
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Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2010: looking for the 2010 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Dick Clark & Ryan Seacrest? Watch the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2010 by Dick Clark as we count down the start of the new decade in Times Square. The pre-taped musical segments for the first time will originate from Las Vegas; musical guests in the segments taped there will include The Black Eyed Peas, Colbie Caillat, Robin Thicke, Keri Hilson, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Kris Allen, Orianthi and the Jonas Brothers. Once more, Fergie will serve as hostess for these pre-taped music segments. Jennifer Lopez and Daughtry are scheduled to perform live in Times Square during the special, while Good Morning America’s Melissa Rycroft will report on festivities there.
The ball in NYC has been changed with Waterford crystals designed into the spectacle. The theme for the ball with the brand new crystals is: “Let There Be Courage.” The ball has over 32,000 lights on it waiting to be lit as soon as 2010 arrives
Veteran host Dick Clark suffered a stroke in December 2004 and had to skip the annual broadcast that he began hosting in 1972. His role in subsequent years has been greatly reduced, with the majority of the hosting duties being performed by Seacrest.
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Last year’s Satellite Radio Awards were a smashing success, so let’s do it again! Only this time I’m throwing out the idea of handing out awards to the whole of satellite radio (and these awards are obviously just for fun), and instead will focus my energies on the channel that I spend 99 percent of my time tuned into: XM Channel 202 The Virus. If It weren’t for 202 I would have killed my subscription some time ago.
This year will be a little more organic, too, and the awards will be spread around different “moments” or whatever that made the $15 per month (or whatever it is) totally worth it. You’ll see what I mean.
Personality of the Year: Chris Stanley, also known as Pepper Hicks, from Ron and Fez. Of all of the guys on 202, Pepper is easily the most entertaining of the bunch. It’s not that he’s necessarily as quick as Jim Norton or Anthony Cumia, or, I don’t know, ridiculous (and I mean that in a good way) as East Side Dave, or as thought-provoking as Ron Bennington, or as level-headed-despite-the-management-shit-storm-surround-him like Opie, but there’s something about Pepper that puts a smile on my face every time he says the word “yeah.” He has also single-handily brought the word “clusterfuck” back from the dead. He could read the phone book and it’d be tremendous. In short, Pepper Hicks is the man.
Shock of the Year: Bobo’s arrest for stealing $10,000 from Mel Karzastan’s office. Let’s get this out of the way: Bobo is an acquired taste at best, so putting up with him for many, many months was something of a chore. The boys were right to tease 92.3FM for its “fugitive” radio bit, which led to Bobo inserting himself into the bit. Fine, it happens. But on November 20, when The Fugitive was finally captured and brought to justice, well, it made up for all those months of near-torture. The boys’ handling of The Fugitive is the definition of a bit that paid off. Bravo to all parties involved.
Feelgood Story of the Year: Sam and East Side Dave getting their own slot on Saturday nights. I like Special Delivery, especially when Sam and Dave talk about things they’re clearly passionate about. (Invariably that’s WWE for Sam and film for Dave.) They’ve been using the “pop culture experts” gimmick for a little while now, but I’m not sure how much the world needs to hear more wacky dolphin news.
Most Annoying Moment(s) of the Year: Sirius XM’s interference with Opie and Anthony. I, for one, love it when Opie “goes inside” and tries to explain the radio business and why it’s falling apart, but that only happens when Sirius XM manage to upset the balance of the show. (I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Ron and Fez complain about management; that’s just not the show’s style.) The most glaring example was the Homeless Shopping Spree. Yes, management somewhat salvaged it by turning it into a talent show but it simply wasn’t the same. I wanted to see Homeless Fez make a comeback! I’d say that management is sucking the life out of the show, but let’s keep things positive. Honorable mention (I guess that’s what you’d call it here) goes to all the message board drama that was brought to the Ron and Fez show earlier in the year. Yikes was that hard to listen to.
Bit of the Year: East Side Dave vs. Fez in the Siren Series. I seriously cannot hear a siren anymore without half-expecting Ron to whip out some questions and have Dave and Fez try to outsmart (well, sometimes) each other. Batman, Star Wars, other topics I can’t remember because they occurred months ago—all brilliant, all worth sitting through endless Pajamagram commercials for. Honorable mentions go to Bill Burr’s Yankees rant (”just a bunch of knock-around guys”) and when Ron and Dave sang U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” at the top of their lungs during one of Fez’s live reads. I still laugh at that just thinking about it.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Apple
It’s the end of another calendar year, which can mean only two things. First, every blog is going to be posting lists of 2009 retrospectives, and second, there are going to be a lot of posts filled with completely off-target predictions for 2010.
So that we’re not leaving our readership sitting in the dark wondering what the TUAW bloggers are prognosticating for the next year, here are our wild guesses well-researched and intelligent predictions for Apple in 2010. Enjoy ‘em, and from all of us at TUAW, have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve and Day.
Steve Sande
Erica Sadun
I’m hoping this will be the year of the tablet. Of course, I’ve been anticipating the year of the tablet since, oh say, around 1993 or so. Apple’s future isn’t about the hardware though, and it’s not about their OS line: it’s about their ability to deliver media. I’m thinking “iTunes gone large”. Apple’s Lala acquisiition, rumored TV deals, and possible textbook distribution agreements point to a renewed focus on content delivery devices.
Admittedly, Apple TV has never really evolved into its promise, perhaps due to areas into which Apple was not able to expand due to licensing deals with companies with Cable/Broadband interests but the iPhone has gone above and beyond in the media realm. So do I see a tablet (or a line of tablet devices) as a natural extension of the Apple content store? Absolutely. Will we see it this year? Possibly. Will it be early this year? Hard to say. Ask me again in a month.
Michael Rose
The tablet, yes, there will be one, it will be spectacular, and about three months after introduction it will drop in price by $200. People who bought the original version would be annoyed except they’re so giddy from having had a piece of the future in their knapsacks for three months.
We’ll see Apple get serious about cloud services by buying a company that’s doing online storage right (Dropbox guys, don’t make your numbers unlisted) and creating a capability that will actually rival some of the more effective platforms out there. Apple needs a Microsoft Mesh-like solution to really unlock the portable power of its devices. Then again, the tablet.
2010 will be the year that hackintoshes become more than a distraction and a legal burden. The Psystar battle shows that Apple knows there’s risk, and sooner or later the netbooks-on-OS-X market will collide with the business realities of Apple’s day to day operations. Then again, the tablet.
We’ll see a secondary carrier for the iPhone in the US (yay!). It will not be Verizon (darn!), it will be T-Mobile. The Verizon iPhone is a 2011 phenomenon, but by then the prevalence of portable Wi-Fi and VoIP solutions for mobile will start to scratch away at the cellphone market’s power. Then again, the tablet.
Mac OS X 10.7 will return us to ‘new features’ land; we’ll learn about it at WWDC and see it by 2011.
Mel Martin
Mike Schramm
I think we’ll finally see the iTablet this year, but it’ll be much closer to an iPhone or a Kindle than a traditional tablet computer, with complete App Store integration and a relatively limited UI. The iPhone will finally be released to multiple carriers, T-Mobile first among them. And Apple will focus on cloud services — they’ll host your music and documents online whenever you want them, accessible from all your Apple devices and/or Apple software.
What, those aren’t out-on-a-limb enough for you? The Mac Pro will get a major update, possibly even a rebranding. The Apple TV will start running App Store apps. And the iPod touch will finally get a camera.
Victor Agreda, Jr.
Apparently the tablet is a forgone conclusion, so I’ll just say that the tablet is just the beginning… I predict that Apple’s tablet move will nearly cement its reign in the digital home of tomorrow. Apple will begin partnering with companies such as LG, KitchenAid and others to bring integration into the kitchen, the spare room, etc. The tablet ecosystem and 3rd-party markets will soon resemble the iPod ecosystems from just a few years ago. Remember the iPod dock with built-in toilet paper dispenser? Prepare yourself for a mirror with enough transparency so you can shave AND read your iTablet at the same time.
Apple will also spend 2010 getting into the cloud like never before. iWork, iTunes and iLife will be the first to get online application, further hooks and functionality. But at WWDC Apple will announce 10.7 and some “really amazing” features that leverage the power of the internet with the power of their OS. Online backups? Yes, and probably something new and a little bit innovative to deal with what is now at least a decade for many of us with digital cameras… You didn’t think iPhoto’s crappy behavior when confronted by huge libraries would go on forever, did you?
Speaking of data management, depending on which winds the wireless ones blow, Apple may tie ever more services from app makers to its own cloudy ambitions. Look for some ad-fueled functionality to be provided free to tablet and iPhone users, and for announcements regarding iPhone on other networks… Plus look for some needed upgrades to the iPhone OS itself. Apple isn’t dumb enough to ignore the jailbreak community and many of the awesome, time-saving tweaks found there. PogoPlank is one example and Stacks is another. Why can’t I see the weather without unlocking my phone? Fixing things like this will put an end to some of the “Droid Does” nonsense.
TUAWTUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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