You might remember those pesky virtual petkeychain things, which managed to successfully spawn out of Japan to populate the world, and annoy the hell out of parents everywhere. They were launched 15 years ago, November 23rd 1996.
I have to hold my hands up and admit, I had not one, but two of these things when I was a kid. When it landed in 1997, so I hope you can forgive me, right? But a quick look on Amazon tells me you can still buy them. Why on Earth anyone would obsess over such a basic toy when you've got the likes of Nintendogs to take care of these days, is beyond me. Still, if you fancy a nostalgia trip that'll likely last for about 35 seconds before you realise once again, why you hate them — an authentic one will set you backfrom $15.
Today, you're gonna shovel one hell of a lot of turkey and pie down your throat, then collapse in a food-coma in front of the TV. But why does your huge meal make you feel like snoozing?
As you'd expect, science has some answers. It turns out that there are two big factors that make you fancy a snooze soon after the pumpkin pie is polished off.
First, when the food starts to arrive in your belly, the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system increases and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system decreases. Huh, what does that mean? Well, the sympathetic nervous system provides our fight-or-flight response. The parasympathetic system gets your organs ready for digestion. Basically, your body wants you to stay still in order to sort out the contents of your stomach. That's why you choose not to move too much after your meal.
Next, when you start digesting your food, you get a big rush of glucose into your blood stream. If you don't have diabetes, your body creates insulin to help the body's cells absorb the glucose. The insulin works by affecting the uptake of a bunch of amino acids in the body — stick with me here! — except for one called tryptophan. So the concentration of tryptophan increases relative to other amino acids. Turns out that in the brain, tryptophan is converted to serotonin, which is itself converted to melatonin — both of which result in sleepiness.
Voila! Your nervous system and your brain both want you to sleep. So I say go with it.
Incidentally, there's a myth that turkey contains a lot of tryptophan. That's kinda rubbish, though, as turkey doesn't contain any more than chicken, beef, or plenty of other meats. So don't blame the turkey too much. Blame your gluttony instead.
The one problem with gadgets is power. Even if batteries start off long-lasting, after 12 months they start to struggle. But a new material might change that.
A team of researchers from Stanford have developed a new battery electrode that can survive 40,000 charge cycles. That's about a hundred times more than a normal Lithium-Ion battery, and enough to make it usable for somewhere between 10-30 years.
So how does it work? It's down to what it's made from: copper hexacyanoferrate. The structure of the material lets charge-carrying ions move in and out of the electrode easily, and it's extremely rugged, so it degrades at a much slower rate than Li-On batteries. That all means it can charge and discharge rapidly, and lasts for ages.
USB drives may come in all shapes and sizes these days, but they all basically give you one of two choices: you can buy one big drive to store as much of your data as possible, or juggle a bunch of drives if you want to keep things separate. Designer Hyunsoo Song has proposed an alternative with this so-called Amoeba modular USB flash drive, however, which let you sort your data on individual drives that can be used both on their own or together as one large drive. The idea there being that you can keep the drives together most of the time, and just detach the appropriate section if you want to share only your photos or videos with someone. Of course, the keyword here is "concept," but it's not exactly as far beyond the realm of possibility as some others we've seen.
Eco-friendliness isn't my biggest concern when it comes to buying headphones, but I guess even Greenpeace likes listening to music, so designer Michael Young has created these recyclable over-the-ear cans as a follow-up to his cornstarch earbuds.
While you can't just chuck 'em in the recycling bin when you tire of the music scene, the headphones are made from repurposable materials like stainless steel, aluminum and cornstarch bio-plastics. Created as part of a joint effort between EOPS, Michael Young, and online store Collette, the Noisezero O+ Eco edition ear goggles are also as good for discerning ears as they are for the environment.
For $159 the headphones even feature a three button inline remote with microphone for taking calls when used with a smartphone, and are available in a gray anthracite or gold finish. I know they're not exactly at the highest end of the headphone pricing scale, but for close to $200 I'd at least expect them to have a single cord design. More here.
Seems like only a few years ago Microsoft was courting Yahoo. Yeah, that didn't work out so hot. Well, Microsoft is back to kicking Yahoo's tires. And this time Yahoo isn't telling at Redmond to get off its lawn.
The New York Times reports that Microsoft has signed an NDA that allows it to peer into Yahoo's financials. Yahoo is currently searching for a new daddy, and every company that's expressed interest has been asked to sign an agreement that lets it peek at Yahoo's books, but not talk to any of the other companies who are looking. NBD: Microsoft got around this restriction by speaking with potential partners before signing the agreement. Sneaky.
Currently, Microsoft and Yahoo have a lucrative partnership: Yahoo sells ads against Microsoft's Bing search engine results. An investment in Yahoo would not only keep that deal alive, it could also allow Microsoft to leap further into the search-engine ad space. Microsoft has had its sights on Google's ad dollars for years and a Yahoo acquisition could give Redmond another piece of ammunition to take on the Mountain View company.
Sure, audio recording via the stock mic and iOS app is pretty serviceable for most tasks, but what about capturing that next Avett Brothers gig? You need look no further than Tascam's iM2 stereo microphone for your Apple handheld or slate. Equipped with a pair of condenser microphones -- the same kit as the outfit's DR-series recorders -- the iM2 plugs right in to the dock port of your iOS device.
The duo is adjustable over 180-degrees for the perfect capture and it sports its own preamp and analog-to-digital converter to cut out unwanted coughs and increase those vicious banjo chops. Since the peripheral doesn't use the stock iPhone preamp, it is capable of capturing up to 125dB levels without distortion. And don't worry about that 4S dying mid-set, as the iM2 features a USB input that enables charging through the encore. If you're jonesin' for a closer look, grab yours for $80 here.
Pringles thinks it's so slick with its stackable chips and pop-top lids. Well, consider the playing field leveled, Lays aficionados, with this universal, resealable bag cap.
The Bag Cap by Copco uses a two-part design wherein the lower section installs around the open end of the bag and the upper cap snaps into place. The cap works with any bag (not just potato chips) and is refrigerator, freezer and dishwasher safe so you can protect your peas from freezer burn without having to hunt for rubber bands. The Bag Cap comes in both medium and large sizes—for family size feed bags—and retail for $7-12 on Amazon.
You might remember the AT&T Status, the "Facebook phone" that didn't quite live up to its name. Now, AllThingsD claims, the rumors will finally bear fruit: a Facebook Phone made by Facebook. The real deal. And it sounds pointless.
ATD says "the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services." Now, if that means a Kindle Fire take on Android—basically making it unrecognizable—that could be a great thing. But if it means stuffing Android with lots of Facebook links, it could be a race car wreck.
But here's a more urgent point—do we need this? Don't we already have this? "Facebook has worked to take things a step further," AllThingsD alleges, "allowing users to upload photos directly from the picture-taking app, or to integrate Facebook contacts with the phone's address book." You mean like Windows Phone 7 does? You mean like WebOS did from day one? What hole is Zuckerberg trying to fill here?
I don't know how good or bad is the Vivitar ViviCam 790HD 3D camcorder, but it has an insanely low price: $99. If you have a 3D TV, it's going to be hard not to pick one for the holidays.
The 790HD is a 5.1-megapixel video camera with 4x optical zoom and 2.7-inch display capable of capturing in 3D. They are also releasing the ViviCam VT135, a 12.1-megapixel compact camera that takes 3D stills, it will cost $99 at Target.
In the SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (version 0.9.1) the Galaxy Nexus scored a very speedy 1879 versus the iPhone 4S's 2250. Obviously, lower is better in this test. The Nexus also outperformed the 4S in the Rightware BrowserMark test, scoring 98,272 versus the 4S's 87,841 (higher is better). The translation of this clusterflock of numbers is that page rendering on the Galaxy Nexus should be faster. The thing is the processor on the Galaxy Nexus is nothing otherworldly, which means that Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) has made some serious software enhancements. In other words, when ICS comes to a phone or tablet withbeefier specs it's going to give you whiplash.
Jealous of that root-ready Kindle Fire, but not ready to trudge through the Amazon to get it? Don't worry, you can stay huddled up with your Nook Tablet and get all the device rooting you want -- with a few caveats. Although the good folks on the XDA Forums haven't unlocked the slab's bootloader just yet, they've managed to root the tablet all the same. Jumping through a few technical hoops (or stumbling across forum user Indirect's one-click Windows utility) will score you access to the Android market and another way to sideload apps on the souped up slate. Custom ROMs? Not yet; in addition to killing the root with every device reboot, the locked bootloader is keeping the Nook's tweaked build of Android 2.3 front and center. More here.
From 'smart' pens to a smarter Siri, Apple's always attempting to find new ways to improve the iPhone, and the company's latest patent application wants to keep its crack-prone glass blemish free. Aptly named a "shock mounting cover glass in consumer electronic devices," the invention claims a tunable shock mount sandwiched between the phone's glass and other hardware.
There's also plans for a sensor that can distinguish a "drop event" from normal phone movements and an actuator to prepare the shock mount for impact. Given that it's only at the application stage, we won't be seeing bombproof iPhone displays any time soon, but here's hoping it'll become a product reality someday. Mostly so we can see just how much of a beating it can take.
We already know that Siri does most of its processing server-side, and that Apple's claims of hardware as a limiting factor are tenuous at best. But new research from French developer Applidium reveals that Apple is truly full of it.
They've managed to completely reveal the entire process used for communications between the iPhone 4S and Apple's servers. In doing so, they discovered that the only thing keeping Siri from running on Android (or just about anything with a microphone and an internet connection) was a single line of code. Furthermore, they suggest that it's entirely possible to create a third-party Siri client that could fool Apple's servers into thinking they were talking with a normal iPhone 4S. Unfortunately, it's that single line of code that could severely hobble any attempt to capitalize on this discovery.
As it turns out, that code is unique to each individual iPhone 4S and as of now, there's no way to replicate it. So in order to get a third party-client working, you would either have to sacrifice a large number of iPhones, or risk easy detection by the Apple Gestapo. Basically, the only thing standing between you and a Siri-equipped refrigerator is a string of random characters.
What, you didn't think academia would just let the finest mind in science rot do you? When Einstein died in 1955, his grey matter was preserved for posterity. Now, 46 slivers of his thinking cap have been donated to Philadelphia's Mütter Museum.
Lucy Rorke-Adams, a neuropathologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, donated the slides yesterday to the museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Rorke-Adams received the slides in the mid-1970's from the widow of a physician who helped arrange their preparation.
While some of the slide sets have been lost over the decades, a majority of his brain remains at Princeton University where the autopsy was performed and where researchers have spent the better part of 50 years inspecting them for physical clues to Einstein's genius. The Mütter slides "are a very important part of medical history," said Rorke-Adams.
The performance is pretty impressive, getting 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write -- making it Kingston's fastest ever flash drive (and a tempting shot at expanding the solid state storage on a laptop). The setup is capped off with a sturdy rubber cover and keyring hook, although we wouldn't fancy putting gear this expensive at the mercy of our car keys. Kingston isn't saying when the devices are coming out, but expect the 64GB model to set you back $193, with 128GB running up a tab to the tune of $377.
Pentax, longtime king of the hideous/genius technicolor DSLR, has lost its throne. This custom job looks like someone took a Canon and dipped it in Willy Wonka's exposed brain. Only... delicious!
It has sprinkles, chocolate sauce, advanced imaging circuitry, and perhaps some sort of homage to Dippin' Dots? At any rate, it's extremely rad looking, and I wish more cameras dared to be more than black or grey. Maybe not candy store nervous breakdown, but a tad more expressive. More here.
I don't know what's in the water in Florida but the same exact Best Buy location that got ridiculously early Black Friday line ups last year is getting ridiculously early Black Friday line ups this year. Yep, people are in line RIGHT NOW.
More than a week early! Skipping Thanksgiving! Who needs to work? YAY WE GET LAPTOPS AND TVs FOR A LITTLE BIT LESS EXPENSIVE THAN USUAL. The magical Best Buy where they must pump fairy dust and heroin through their vents is located near the Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg, Florida. Last year, that Best Buy awarded the family who camped out early free iPads for their dedication. There's no mention of such luxurious treatment this year. Aww.
Christine Orta actually set up her tent (and motorcycle?) on Wednesday and is coordinating a stakeout strategy with three other families. Orta and her cohorts are all students which well explains a lot—save money, waste time, be crazy.
By adding some extra ingredients and a pinch of a zinc compound to a traditional epoxy resin, a team of French researchers have made a plastic whose chemical bonds continually break and reform. When it's cold, the material is pretty rigid, maintaining its shape. Warm it up, though, and the plastic becomes malleable, allowing the material to heal small scratches and dents.
Normally synthetic plastics fall into two types: thermoplastics and thermosets. The former can be heated and remoulded but are weak, and the latter can only be processed once but are strong. This new plastic sits in the middle: it's possible to remould it, but it's also strong. It even maintains its properties when it's ground up and recycled.
It sounds too good to be true. Maybe it is. But I want everything plastic I own from now on to be made out of it.
This week rumours have circulated about HTC launching a blisteringly quick 2.5GHz quad-core phone. But that will soon seem paltry, when our mobile devices are fuelled by liquid metal.
IBM have been working out how to use liquid to simultaneously fuel and cool processors - and they've managed it. In their Zurich Research Laboratory, the team have taken their inspiration from the human brain.
"The human brain is 10,000 times more dense and efficient than any computer today. That's possible because it uses only one, extremely efficient, network of capillaries and blood vessels to transport heat and energy, all at the same time," IBM's Bruno Michel told New Scientist.
First, this bunch of IBM engineers stacked hundreds of silicon wafers on top of each other to create three-dimensional processors. Nothing particularly new there: after all, Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors, to be launched in 2012, do just that.
But IBM have created channels between the wafers which allow liquid metal - vanadium, to be precise - to run through the entire processor. Because the liquid is metallic, it can be used to carry charged particles that power the chip. As the vanadium loses its charge, it also absorbs heat, meaning the fluid acts as a coolant, too.
The knock-on effect? Far high efficiency, and far higher clock speeds in tiny devices. Which could leave the 2.5GHz HTC quaking in its boots.
