Tag Archives: gizmodo

Congratulations to the masters of the metaphor – Gizmodo.

This noxious attitude has permeated our tech culture for the last couple of decades, from a half-decade of open-source devotees crying about Microsoft on Slashdot, on toward the last few years of Apple ascendency. It’s childish. It’s defeatist. And it shows a simultaneous fear to actually innovate and improve while spilling gallons of capitulative semen to a fatuous, dystopian cuckold wank-mare.

via iPad Snivelers: Put Up or Shut Up – Engineers – Gizmodo.

Bolded for emphasis. Is that not the best metaphor you’ve ever read?

Jason Chen, the Master of Metaphors

One last effort. A slow, but firm, shove of the chips. All in. Palm’s only hope to save a company once synonymous with smart handheld devices: the Pre. Their eyebrow raised, daring you to call. They flip. Full house. Respectable. Decent. Impressive even. But not the highest hand.

[…]

Think of it like this. The software is agile, smart and capable. The hardware, on the other hand, is a liability. If Palm can get someone else to design and build their hardware—someone who has hands and can feel what a phone is like when physically used, that phone might just be one of the best phones on the market.

[…]

I can’t wait to see what Palm gets dealt in their next hand.

via Gizmodo – Palm Pre Review – Palm pre.

15 Links: The Browser Clear Out Edition

It’s that time again – my browser desperately needs a clear out, so here we go…

  • Weebly
    Their tagline is “Create a free website and blog.” I don’t know how well it works, but it seems to be a nice version of either Tumblr, or WordPress.com – except not purely related to blogging. Sure, do it. Whatever.
  • Wikipedia’s List Of People Who Have Mysteriously Disappeared
    This is pretty freaky, actually – it’s not like we know for _sure_ that those people pre the 1800 actually did disappear under mysterious circumstances. Only two entries in 2008, however – some Russian who could have been the victim of a political murder plot, as well as a Florida resident who has recently been taken off medication. Mysterious? You be the judge.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Trailers
    If the trailers are that good, then you know the movie will be. Hopefully it isn’t too long, though – last time my sister and I went, the queues were massive. The movie is out July 17th, so strap yourselves in – July seems to be gearing up for a ripper of a month.
  • 30 Exceptional CSS Navigation Techniques
    Another smashing post from Six Revisions (not to be confused with Six Apart, mind you), this article will not only tell you how to achieve stunning navigation, it’ll also tell you how to do them using CSS – which is, of course, completely awesome.
  • Gizmodo explains the difference between $100 and $100, 000 speakers
    An interesting read, if a little long. Wait, I think that’s been said before – in that case, it’s a great read, however, it’s a little long. Filled with information, though – so read it anyway, and hopefully you’ll have learned something by the time you get to the end. 🙂
  • 12 Gauge Shot Glasses
    Yeah, you read that right. 12 Gauge. Shot glasses. Not shotgun, but shot *glasses*. What could be more awesome (or stupid, if you’re so inclined) than alcohol and shotguns? 😛
  • Tweetlite flashes tweets in morse code
    To be compltely honest, I don’t quite understand the point of this one. It’s actually quite pointless, unless you really love Twitter and your morse code. Well, whatever brings in the green, yeah?
  • Cosmic Nitro
    From the guy who developed Galcon for the iPhone [iTMS Link], comes his latest creation, Cosmic Nitro. It’s basically a pretty rehash of the “space-invaders” like genre, similar to Missile Command, where you have to defend your city from waves of incoming stuff (including toxic waste, comets, asteroids, aliens, etc). It’s not bad – and at $1.19, it’s probably worth it. [iTMS link]
  • iTypeFastr
    From the dark side of jailbroken iPhones, comes a custom keyboard. Unlike other keyboards for the iPhone, this keyboard comes with a custom layout. No, it’s not dvorak, (someone make this, please), but it does change the size of the keys to reflect an updated QWERTY layout. It makes the most-frequently used keys larger (so they’re easier to press), all without making any of the other keys smaller by using up all the available keyboard space. Again, your mile may vary – I haven’t personally tested this cos I can type fine on the standard iPhone keyboard anyway.
  • Tweetie for Mac
    The excellent @chartier takes a look at Tweetie for Mac, from the guy who made the iPhone app of the same name. It’s damn slick – the interface is as good as any, and besides – it’s nice to see Cocoa-based Twitter apps (AIR sucks, btw). You can tell it is a beta, though – there are certainly features missing, and the current feature-set seems a little lightweight for my liking. It’s not as featured as Twhirl is, for instance. It is being released on Monday, so keep your eyes on teh (sic) interwebs (sic). 😉
  • Apple market share shows negative growth
    Oh great. I’ll pin this one on the Global Financial Crisis, then – thanks to the PC market crashing haphazardly around the US (see what I did there?), Apple’s market share has also taken a tumble as a result. Sure – it’s not right to pay $500 for a logo, but it’s so much more than just the brand, you know?

And lastly, we have:

  • Apple WWDC developer videos
    The interview from Cultured Code was the only one I actually watched, but I’m sure they’re all excellent. It’s especially interesting to see if they actually went through all the steps in the video, or if they were putting on a show for Apple… I’m sure it’s the former, though. Those Germans know how to do things right. 🙂

And we’re done for another week. Cya, and as usual, comments below. Doing links (esp with “Smart Links”) in WordPress actually sucks. Next time, I might just be a lazy blogger and put in the links – none of this fancy <a href=”link here”>some text here</a> crap. Pfft. Screw that. 😛

15 Links – The Somewhat Epic Edition

Haven’t done this for a while, so here’s a few links that I’ve picked up from the interwebs these couple of days…

COÖP
Sure, it’s flash. But it’s damn cool anyway! Sorta like a LED-scrolling name badge, but in the standard OSX-style tickbox instead. From what I can gather, it’s some sort of design-based website. Thanks to @decryption for this one.

start.io
This has been labelled “Web 2.0” at it’s best – and it’s not hard to see why. Essentially, start.io is a collection of links for your customisable pleasure, that anyone can access. You can sort you links out, and then people who have similar interests to you can see which websites you like the most!

40 Excellent Logos Created with Helvetica
Could you spot Helvetica from a mile off? Okay, name a brand that features Helvetica as it’s logo. Name two. Name another? In any case, this site decides to showcase 40 logos that have two things in common: they’re all awesome, and they’re all based off Helvetica.

Bloody Scammers
This is a JPEG link that shows an interesting conversation between a Skyper and a scammer. Well, at least the scammer was honest?

Sad Roo Is Sad
Another JPEG link, again from Twitter, this one shows a kangaroo – with what seems to be a tear. Awwww….

RSS Lamp Shades
Aw, c’mon now. This is just too awesome not to share with you. I mean, nothing says “web geek” better than RSS Lampshades. Now, if only they made Facebook or Twitter ones…

Have Gadgets Turned Us Into Lazy Morons?
Well, have they? There’s an amusing graphic on the page that shows the evolution of the human species, you know homo erectus, etc, and at the end, there’s this pic of a guy hunched over a computer keyboard, peering into a monitor… Gold.

Periodic Table of Game Controllers
I love how they’ve left out the actual outlines of the controllers themselves. Full size is an epic pic indeed, you can view it here. I’d love to have this in my room, blown up to poster-size and hanging on my wall…

Periodic Table of Typefaces
Just like the gaming one above, this periodic table is once epic pic. I probably wouldn’t want it as a poster (just because I’m not a designer), but still – it’d be ultra cool in any case. Egads! Where is Verdana?! They left my favourite typeface out! 😮

It Takes Roughly 17 Hard Drives To Stop a .50 cal Armour Piercing Incendiary Round
This is excellent – guns and hard drives. Seriously, though – a .50 cal? Armour piercing? If all that wasn’t enough, incendiary? I’m so there, and you should be too. Not Safe For Work, because there’s death metal and lots of swearing.

Flammable Water
Not actually flammable water, per se, but the fact that a couple in the US managed to light the *gas* that was coming from their water supply? Sounds like another Humberto Vidal disaster waiting to happen. (As a side note, I saw the “Seconds from Disaster” clip about the aforementioned disaster… Things like that just shouldn’t happen.)

Laser Dial
No, it’s not a laser telephone. It’s got nothing to do with telephones at all, actually. Instead, think more along the lines of a laser sundial. It’s super cool, and I want one.

Masked Man Demos iPhone 3.0 Beta
This is a vid of a masked man (who likes to say like, like, a lot) who goes through pretty much every iPhone OS 3.0 feature you can think of. Or poke a finger at. See what I did there?

Sanwa’s Throat Microphone
Awesome throat mike is awesome. I want one, even if the only reason would be to look like a Navy SEAL/USMC Force Recon/Delta Op when I’m skyping, haha! 😀

5 Facebook Profile Pic Hacks
Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. I will have to look into doing one of these at some stage, just to “spruce up” my facebook a bit.

16 Links: The Engadget Edition

So I just had the task of trawling through all the Engadget posts that I missed while I was away (some 43 pages of posts). I must say, Endgadget has turned into something that doesn’t quite cut the mustard for me. Maybe I’ll have to start subscribing to Gizmodo – maybe they’ll have a better SNR. 20 out of 440+ isn’t so bad! /sarcasm.

In any case, there are a hell of a lot of links, so I’ll just get right into it:

DIY Screw-Nut Rings
Corny? Undoubtedly. Geeky? For sure.

DIY Prosthesis in Tasmania
A post on Engadget, about Tasmania! Woot!

DARPA’s 1.8 Gigapixel digicam
Whatever happened to “less is more”? Then again, this is DARPA we’re talking about…

Cell Phone Reunion
iPhone is bad-ass. Owning one doesn’t make you so.

LaserPup
Lazors fire! PEW PEW PEW!

Recompute – the cardboard PC
Cool design. Recyclable exterior.

Windows 7 SKUs
Wait – how many versions?!

Tokyoflash’s Heko watch
Again, this is the watch I’d be wearing. If I wore watches.

Seagate’s 2TB HDD
Lots of data (to lose).

Western Digital’s 2TB HDD
But this ones’s GREEN-er.

Days to 1 million
How long did it take to each smartphone to hit 1 million units sold? FYI, the iPhone 3G took 3 days.

Gigapixel image of Obama’s inaguration
Because we need a mega-close up, okay? You can buy one of the devices, too!

Canon doesn’t suck
No, they do not. For those of you that don’t know – no, Canon do not make vacuum cleaners.

Windows 7 Beta Impressions
It’s good, actually. Better than Vista, and better than XP.

Apple vs Palm
A good read, if a little long.

That’s it!

Go away – I don’t want your comments anyway. 😉