Check out this crazy concept cellphone system called Brix. It’s a phone with one side as a screen, with no bezel. You can ‘stack’ several of the things side by side to create a larger screen. It’s not clear to me if this is just a fun idea or if the intent is to actually manufacture the system.
More details at Yanko Design: Two Brix Are Better Than One
And at SciFi.Com: Brix modular cell phone can expand into a large-screen display
This came in the email today:
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August 30, 2007
Subject: Future of CONNECT Music Service
To Our Valued Sony CONNECT Music Customers:
Today Sony announced its intent to move to a Windows Media Technology platform for Walkman® products in the United States, Canada and Europe. We strongly believe that the decision to embrace a more open platform for these devices will enable us to provide you with a better overall experience. As a result of this change, we will be phasing out the CONNECT™ Music Service based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.
We are fully committed to helping you through this important transition away from the CONNECT Music Service and providing you with the best possible guidance on how to successfully transfer your music library to an MP3 or Windows Media-compatible format, should you wish to do so. We recommend that you use any outstanding promotional codes, account credits or gift certificates available in your music account prior to March 2008, but even after the store closes you will continue to be able to play, manage, and transfer the music in your SonicStage library and on your existing ATRAC devices. If you obtain a new device, all of Sony’s new Walkman music and video players will support MP3 or Windows Media Audio format.
In the coming months we will keep you informed of the status of the CONNECT Music Service phase out in your region. Periodic updates will be posted on the CONNECT music store and on the Sony Electronics customer service site, http://esupport.sony.com/EN/news/article215.
Please note that the CONNECT e-book service for the Reader in the U.S. will not be affected.
Thank you for your business and for your continued support as we work to complete this transition with as little disruption to you as possible.
Sincerely,
Sony CONNECT Music Team
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For more information, check out this faq.
First Google Video, then Urge, now this? How many other services with no customers must die before this madness ends!!?? 🙂
Two Slits Are Better Than One is a fascinating article about the double-slit experiment, and how light can behave like a wave and a particle at the same time, how observing an experiment can change the results, and all kinds of other quantum physics magicalness.
I don’t claim to understand it all, but it just sends my mind spinning off into crazy directions when I read stuff like this.
Check out this rather amazing video, which should really grab the attention of anyone who resizes or crops image in their day-to-day routine.
For more information, see Dr. Ariel Shamir’s homepage.
Brad Feld at Feld Thoughts – The Montana Future has up an interesting post on what he (and presumably others? I’ve never heard the term before) calls “The Montana Future”: the idea that we can live anywhere and still do our jobs, thanks to the internet.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone, but 99% of the work I do, I can do from my home office, which could be anywhere. Most of my work is for people and places near by, but that’s mostly due to networking and habit. I guess in a way I backed into this “Montana Future” without really realizing I was doing it. Mr. Feld’s post served as a great reminder of how fortunate I am to have this opportunity.
For the few of you who may not know, ‘phishing’ is a process that unscrupulous folks use to try to trick you out of your personal information. Most often, it arrives in the form on an email that appears to be from your bank, or Paypal, or some other online service. The email will ask you to click a link and update your account information. The trick is that you’re not really going to end up on the real site, but rather on a look alike, and the criminals will be collecting all the information you ‘update.’
That’s the quick and dirty on phishing, anyway…
So how good are you at detecting a phishing attempt? Take this quiz and find out!
Me? I got 8 out of 10, but kinda sorta should’ve gotten 9 out of 10. One of them was so obvious that I thought it was a trick question, and given that it was a quiz and not my real data at stake, I didn’t research it. Yeah, I know… excuses, excuses… 🙂
One of my various ways of keeping a roof over my head is editing TechDispenser.com, a technology blog aggregator. If you’re into tech, it’s a great place to keep up with the blogosphere’s reaction to technology-related news.
But some of the blogs that are a part of the TechDispenser network include off-topic posts. I reject those posts; it’s what makes TD special. The reader doesn’t have to sift through posts about a blogger having a runny nose or that someone stole his lunch out of the company fridge today.
But sometimes, there are real gems that have to get rejected for being off-topic. And I just feel compelled to pass along these posts in whatever way I can. Which finally brings me ’round to the point of this post. Andy Updegrove of the consortiuminfo.org Standard’s Blog is on vacation, hiking around New Mexico and Utah, and he’s blogging about his adventures.
And damn, the man can write.
Please check out his post, Preserving Our Past to Help Us See Our Future: A Reunion with Spirit House and if you enjoy it as much as I did, pass word of it along to your friends.
So what is Spirit House? In Mr. Updegrove’s own words:
Why all the interest in this one site? As cliff dwellings go, Spirit House is hardly the largest, nor the grandest, nor the most dramatically situated. With 49 rooms spread along a quarter mile of ledge in a pleasingly sinuous, but otherwise unremarkable canyon, it is for the most part typical of the hundreds of other ruins scattered throughout the Four Corners area. And yet it remains perhaps the best loved, if not the best kept secret, among Anasazi ruins.
The star Mira is a red giant in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). Astronomers turned the Galaxy Evolution Explorer orbiting telescope on it, and found this giant ‘tail’ (the Galaxy Evolution Explorer sees ultraviolet light). The tail is 13 light-years long!
Comet-like star streaks through Milky Way
&
‘We have broken speed of light’
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light – an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
The next cold fusion? Or a genuine breakthrough?
From the ‘Weird Video Files’ comes this one. It’s a bit long but oddly fascinating.
Thanks to the very cool BotJunkie site for sharing this one!