Archive for January, 2010

My thoughts on the Apple iPad

It’s the long awaited tablet from Apple, the iPad. I figured it would be called the ‘iSlate’ or the ‘iTablet’ but I guess that’s why I don’t get paid to predict such things. So, this being a tech blog I figured I should say a few things about it. Why not, other people do on their blogs.

First, I doubt that iPad will be merged with the Mac laptop line. I can see them eliminating the low end laptop but only if sales started to fall for those units. Maybe the Air will be retired because of the iPad, not sure. I’d have to see the sales numbers on the laptops to make any further observations on that.
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Soviet Star Wars

Not that the proliferation of weapons in space (or other places for that matter) is something to ever wish for but you have to admit that the idea has a ‘Buck Rogers’ kind of coolness to it.

“…a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was… …[The Soviets] funded two massive R&D studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s to explore how to counter imaginary American missile defense ideas,” he says. Two concepts emerged: Skif—a laser “cannon” in orbit—and another weapon known as Kaskad (Cascade), designed to destroy an enemy’s satellites with missiles fired from another craft in orbit.”

Soviet Star Wars

Bigshot: Focus on Cool!

I can only hope that this eventually makes it into the regular market:

A camera designed for kids can be much more than just a toy: it can serve as a powerful educational medium.  We believe that such an educational camera must have a radically different design from that of a typical consumer camera.   (a) It should be designed as a kit for assembly by students.  The assembly process should not only demystify the workings of the camera, but also expose students to various science and engineering concepts.  (b) It should include features that cannot be found in other cameras, allowing students to explore new creative dimensions.   (c) It should be low-cost, with the potential to serve as the basis for a scalable social venture.  Bigshot has been designed with these goals in mind.

The killer is the rotating lens board on the front. The lens wheel (or polyoptic wheel as it’s called)has three settings: normal, panoramic, and stereo. Normal is what you would think  it is, normal photo. The panoramic lens gives you a 72 degree field of view and creates a nice barrel distortion, and the stereo is a small prism that acts as a beam splitter to shoot a left and right image onto the sensor.Software that comes with the camera will adjust the distortion from the pano lens and create red/blue anaglyph stereo images when you use the beam splitter. Oh, did I mention that the camera can be powered by either a single AA battery or a few cranks on the built in dynamo?

[via MAKE]

Bigshot: A Camera for Education.

Sci-Fi-O-Rama

If it wasn’t for the talents of Roger Dean, Chris Foss, Mobius, and countless others, where would our science fiction books get  their amazing cover art? In ‘Sci-Fi-O-Rama’ you can take a leisurely jaunt through the countless dimensions of hyperspace and huge space ships and just soak in all those fantasy worlds.

Sci-Fi-O-Rama