Ariel Atom 2 (Incredibly Fast Street Cars)

I recently watched a video on the Ariel Atom 2, and I was very impressed by this ultra stripped down track car for the road. Because of its powerful engine and light body, it can beat just about any motorcycle or car (yes even the Ferrari).

The car is powered by a supercharged Honda i-VTEC 2.0 engine putting out 300 horsepower on a body that weights about a thousand pounds. What makes this car fast is its power to weight ratio. For example, the Ariel Atom 2 produces about 600bhp per 1000kg, while a Porsche 911 Carrera produces about 237bhp per 1000kg.

Make a 3D Dodecahedron Calendar

Do you want to make your own 3D Dodecahedron Calendar? For those of you who don't know what a Dodecahedron is, its a 12 sided object. This seems like a great project for kids, or something to do when you're bored.

To make your calendar, follow the instruction below:

• Select the calendar you want to create (either: the regular dodecahedron [which requires glue], or the rhombic dodecahedron [no glue required].
• Select the year, language, and the day (Sunday or Monday) in which your week starts.
• Finally select the format (PostScript or PDF). If you don't know which to choose, select PDF. Note: You can modify the PostScript file if you want to add birthdays to the calendar.
• Press the download button, to get the file.
• Then print it out, make sure to legal size paper, letter size paper may be too small.
• Cut out the template, only cut on the solid lines.
• Fold along each dotted line. Then apply glue to each folded tab and paste the tab underneath the 'petal' next to it.

Cool Product of the Week: MicroOptical

There is a company that I read about at CES that I thought I would like to highlight. Its called MicroOptical, and they make ultra portable wearable displays that you can wear on your glasses.

I have been a big fan of wearable computers for a long time, but have seen them as very impractical, because the display and the hardware was much too bulky. I have watched this equipment shrink in size over the years, and have seen the capabilities increase to a point where its becoming more practical.

The MicroOptical head-up displays are very small, and light (they weigh about 1 ounce), and can accept standard VGA, NTSC, PAL, RS170 and RS-232 signals.

Google Local for mobile

This is one service from Google that I totally missed since it was announced at CES, its called 'Google Local for mobile'. The web site for the service states, "Combining directions, maps, and satellite imagery, Google Local for mobile is a free download that lets you find local hangouts and businesses across town or across the country — right from your phone."

I have not tested it on my mobile phone yet (it's a Nokia 6230, that supports J2ME which is required), primarily because I don't pay for the data services (which is also required). The main reason why I don't use the data services is that IMHO there have not been any worthwhile applications for it until now.

Scientists develop bird flu vaccine (Article)

PhysOrg.com reports: "University of Pittsburgh scientists say they've genetically engineered an avian flu vaccine that has proven 100 percent effective in mice and chickens."

This is great news for our livestock, but what about us humans? The vaccine currently only protects the livestock, which is important because hopefully we can stop that virus at its source. Although, if the virus mutates and passes to humans, were in trouble.

The bright side is that our livestock will live long and healthy lives.

Is the Earth's Magnetic Field Weaking? (Article)

Nova Reports "Like the plot of a sci-fi B movie, something weird is happening deep underground where the constant spin of Earth's liquid metallic core generates an invisible magnetic force field that shields our planet from harmful radiation in space. Gradually, the field is growing weaker. Could we be heading for a demagnetized doomsday that will leave us defenseless against the lethal effects of solar wind and cosmic rays? 'Magnetic Storm' looks into our potentially unsettling magnetic future."

This is an interesting article that discusses the consuquences of the Earth's magnetic field weakening. Which range from the end of the world, to the magnetic field reversing itself.

Disney buys Pixar (Article)

CNET News.com reports: "Walt Disney announced Tuesday that it's paying $7.4 billion in stock to acquire Pixar Animation Studios--a deal that puts Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Disney's board of directors."

Cool Product of the Week: Wallet Flash

I am starting a new section in this blog that I am going to be calling the 'product of the week'. These will be products that I find or hear about during the week that I will highlight here.

I am generally amazed about how innovative some USB products have gotten lately. There is a product from Walletex called 'Wallet Flash' that is a USB flash drive about the size of a credit card that can fit into your wallet.

I carry a flash drive with me just in case I need storage. Although I find a I rarely use it, like a boy scout my motto is always be prepared. This wallet flash drive I think is a great idea.

File Your U.S. Taxes for Free File

When the new year begins all of our thoughts turn towards April 15th, the day the tax man comes. Some people look forward to this time of the year because they know that they're going to get money back, and others dread it because they know that they owe money.

Whether you're getting a refund or owe money this year, did you know that you can file your taxes for free online? The IRS has provided a list of sites where you can file your taxes for free. Although there appears to be a catch, 'Free File services are limited to taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income of $50,000 or less; or otherwise as noted.' (accourding to the IRS site)

If you're just looking for tax advise or tax forms (requires Adobe Acrobat), the IRS has a lot of free information on their web site. This site has become more useful over the years. I remember using it back in the early 90s, the only useful thing on the sitewas the forms that you could download.

Are virtual assets taxable? (Article)

CNET News.com reports: "...virtual-world community buzzing over a new question: Should online game players' assets--the weapons, characters, clothing and such--they've accumulated but not yet sold for real-world cash be taxable by the IRS?..."

I was kind of shocked to see this article, I didn't know how to deal with the fact that virtual assets can now be taxable. I believe in everyone paying his or her fair share, but part of me wants to think this tax is getting excessive when it comes to virtual items. Most of us are used to paying sales tax on the items we buy (unless you live in a state that doesn't have it), but having to pay a tax on an item that only exists as lines of code a server somewhere is a difficult concept for me to deal with.

Whether the items are real or virtual, real money is being used to pay for these virtual items. So taxing these items makes sense, but this doesn't mean that I have to agree with it.

Privacy in the World Today

Do you worry about your privacy, according to Sun's Scott McNealy, "You have no privacy, get over it." Sometimes it feels like we have no privacy, so I wonder if I should 'get over it'. Here is a funny video about what the world could be like if we truly have no privacy.

Google Launches Personalized Homepage For Mobile Devices (Aticle)

InformationWeek reports: "Mobile users can set it up to automatically display information including stock quotes, news headlines, GMail, local weather, and selected RSS feeds. ... The mobile homepage also provides at-a-glance access to Google Web mail, local weather and handpicked RSS feeds. The content is optimized for the smaller screens and low bandwidth associated with mobile devices."

Predictions for 2006 and Beyond

The future is so bright, you will need a flashlight to see it. The future outlook doesn't look too bright anywhere in the world. It seems that we are running out of a critical resource that drives all the world economies and that is oil (no new news here).

I really believe their might be bright futures in other forms of energy production. I also see continued growth and advancements in consumer electronic products.

Below is a break down of my of what I see happening to following industries:

Technology:

• The once powerful gaming industry will start to slow down. Although if you read this Google News page, you might think different. Personally I don't believe that it can keep the momentum it has had over the last several years.
  
• PC industry maybe slowing (or its just Dell), and processor companies will continue to confuse customers with their new branding? (I am really begin to miss the days of Ghz ratings, at least you knew what you were buying)
  
• Computer attacks (virus, worms, exploits, etc.) will continue to increase and grow in sophistication.
• The music and movie industry will continue to publish garbage, and then blame pirates for their profits.
• As consumer audio/video equipment becomes more sophisticated, there will be a lot of confusion among consumers about what hardware to buy. There are several competing hardware standards (i.e.: HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray) right now, and its only going to get worse. People want to buy technology and want it to work well. They don't want to be forced to choose a standard that might not be supported in a few years.
  

Energy:

• We should have put more money into alternative energies after the 1970/1980s energy crisis. We would be much farther a long in finding alternative forms of fuel to power our vehicles and industries.
  
• Oil rich countries will use their resources for political purposes.
• There should be an increase need for nuclear power production. This might scare a lot of people, but right now it might be one of our best alternatives.
  
• There should be an increase spending public transportation and ride sharing programs.
  
• There should be increase spending on alternative energy production.

World (generally more of the same...)

• The environment: more natural disasters to come.
• The older population will continue to rise, and the birth rates will continue to fall in most modern industrialized countries.
• The population will continue to increase in poorer countries, causing increased war, disease, and shortages of food and other resources.

Mobileplay Advertises Outside the Box to Offer Free Content (Article)

PC Magazine reports: "Mobileplay Inc., a venture backed by Los Angeles-based Rustic Canyon Partners, announced Monday that it has launched a beta version of its ad-based service offering free access to downloadable multimedia content for many mobile device users."

Mobileplay offers a free software download that allows you to access a variety of content on your mobile computing device such as: BlackBerries, PocketPC/Windows Mobile, and Palm OS. This multimedia content includes: news, games, weather, and more. Mobileplay supports itself by running small banner ads within the content. For more information, read the following article.

Google Pack Software

Google made an interesting announcement at CES, they unveiled a new package of software called the 'Google Pack'. This software bundles together several popular applications that you might use everyday into one package, and then helps you keep it up-to-date. Most of these applications are available free by themselves, but what is great about this package of software is that it all comes bundled together.

Below is a a complete list of the applications that are included in the Google Pack:

• Google Earth
• Google Toolbar for IE
• Ad-Aware SE Personal
• Google Desktop
• Google Pack Screensaver
• Norton AntiVirus 2005 SE
• Picasa
• Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar
• Adobe Reader 7
• RealPlayer
• Trillian
  

To download the the 'Google Pack' software, go to the following site.

Bye-bye hard drive, hello flash (Article)

Hard drives can consume up a lot of space and power, suck the energy out of your notebook's battery. Flash memory could soon offer a storage alternative for laptops. Cnet reports ,"By about the turn of the decade, NAND (flash memory) could even replace hard drives entirely in some mini notebooks because of the increasing amount of data the chips can hold". For more information read the entire article.

Hard to Find 800 Numbers

Some companies that you do business with don't publish their 800 numbers publicly or they make them hard to find by burying them deep in the bowels of their web site. Well stop pulling your hair out trying to find these numbers, and check out a site called 'Hard to Find 800 Numbers'.

Ipod My Baby

I recently came across a site called 'Ipod My Baby', were parents dress their children up as their favorite MP3 player. This is taking people's obsession with technology too far. The pictures are adorable and disturbing at the same time.

Would you dress your own child in one of these getups?

Simon Sez Santa

I like to post something fun for Christmas each year, and here is my submission for this year. Check out 'Simon Sez Santa'. Give Santa instructions like (jump, sit down, etc.), and watch what will happens.

Computers Then and Now...

Anyone who has used a computer for a little while can tell you how much these devices have changed over the last several years. If you have been using computers for a long time, and you sit back and think about the first computer you touch verses today's modern personal computer there is an amazing quantum leap forward in several orders of magnitude in processing power.

The first computer I ever used was an Apple ][+, with 48K of RAM (with a maximum memory size of 64K), a color monitor (basically a TV without a tuner), and two floppy drives. This machine had a 1Mhz 6502 CPU (8-bit), and cost about US$1000 at the time.

The first home computer that I could afford (it cost about US$100) was the Timex Sinclair 1000, I think it also had a 1Mhz 6502 CPU, 16KB RAM (with the expansion pack), and tape drive for storage (which never work). To be honest, I don't even think my 16KB RAM expansion pack worked. But I was still happy to have my own home computer.

Then in the early 80's IBM changed the personal computer market by introducing the IBM PC (specs: Intel 8086 4.7Mhz 16-bit CPU, 640KB RAM [max.], 2 floppy drives, keyboard, CGA graphics video). This was an okay machine for its time, but because IBM created it this gave it a market advantage over the competition.

A little while after the IBM PC was released, the clone makers started producing copies of it because IBM used off the shelf technologies. Soon the clone makers surpassed IBM in innovation of the technology that they created.

Then in 1984, Apple release the Macintosh (specs: Motorola 68000 8Mhz 16/32-bit CPU, 128KB RAM, keyboard, mouse, built-in monochrome monitor) and the world changed again. For the first time consumers were introduced to a functional Graphics User Interface (GUI).

Now let's fast forward to the modern day, today's computers are much different from the days of yore. For example, recently I found a site that allows you to run Apple ][ software from inside your browser (this site has been taken down). It’s really amazing to think that the state of the art home computer 20+ years ago can now be emulated in a browser (although, at the same time technically its not that amazing).

Let’s consider today's hardware; we will start out with the basics and work deeper into the computer:

• Computer cases: As far as the PC industry goes, the biggest advance in cases was made when the tower case was invented. Otherwise, they're relatively the same style as about 15+ years ago. If you want avant-garde case designs, buy a Mac. Note: There has been some innovations in computer form factor designs recently, but none of them have really gone mainstream.
• Power supplies: These devices have steadily increased in power output over the years. I think the original IBM PC power supply provided under 100W of power. Modern PC power supplies can now output 1000W of power.
• Motherboards: The basic look of a motherboard has not changed radically in base appearance, but looks can fool you. Modern motherboards are light years ahead of their predecessors; they're faster and more advanced.
• CPUs: have radically evolved over the last few decades. The modern CPU now has the ability to process 64-bits of data at time (along with the ability to address terabytes of RAM), and as have the ability to run multiple cores on the same chip. These chips also have multi-megabyte level 2 caches of fast RAM. Although, since these devices now run so fast (almost 4Ghz), they also run much hotter then they ever did. So we have had to resort to air, and in some cases liquid cooling to keep them running as fast as we do.
• Video Cards: Like CPUs have evolved radically over time, and are continuing to advance at a breakneck pace. Video cards can process more graphics information then previous generations, and create semi photo-realistic 3D virtual environments in real-time. These cards now have their own dedicated GPU (Graphic Processing Units), memory (up to 512MB of fast RAM), cooling and power requirements. These cards also have the ability to drive multiple monitors at high resolutions.
• Hard Drives: When the IBM XT came out there was an 20MB hard drive option for it (about 20,000,000 bytes, 1 byte = 1 character of information). Over the years, these devices have gotten smaller, cheaper, faster, and higher capacity. Modern hard drives are now approaching a 1 terabyte of storage capacity (about 1,000,000,000,000 bytes/characters of storage).
• Hard Drive Interfaces: This is the technology that connects the computer to the hard drive. There have been many significant advances over the last few decades in this technology sector. The original IBM PC-XTs used an MFM technology to talk to the hard drive. So after that there was SCSI (and its variants), ATA (and its variants), and now there is SATA (Serial-ATA). External hard drives can be connected to the computer through its USB and Firewire ports.
  
• RAM: The IBM PC used to DIPP chips, these were individual memory chips that looked like bugs with metal legs. Every time you put these chips into the computer, you ran the risk of bending the legs. Today, we have SIMM style high-speed DDR2 memory, with storage capacities in the multi-gigabytes. This was undreamed of in the early days.
• Audio: Back in the early days if we heard a few high pitch beeps we were happy. Now computer audio cards support: 7.1 channel surround sound and incredibly realistic audio fidelity. Modern audio cards like video cards are always trying to push themselves to the next level.
• Optical Disks: All the early PCs supported tape or floppy drives for storage, optical drives (such CD and DVD drives) were not even an option until several years later. In fact in the early 90's the early sound cards and CD-ROM drives started the multimedia revolution. Currently there are double-layer read/writable DVD optical drive can hold over 8.5GB of data. Next generation DVD drives (such as Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) will hold 30GB-50GB.
• Expansion Cards: When the IBM PC was available, all you had were 8-Bit ISA slots, later it was expanded to 16-bit. The next PC bus technology to take hold was PCI, which supported a 32-bit data path. The next generation of PCI, is the PCI-X standard which supports a 64-bit data path.
• Ports: When the IBM PC came on the market, all it had was keyboard and cassette ports. Serial and parallel ports were optional, and required an expansion card. Now, all those ports are obsolete, and have been replaced by USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394 (AKA Firewire) ports. The USB 2.0 ports can support data transfer rates of up to 480Mbps.
• Wireless Ports: These ports have been available for sometime (i.e.: Infrared, and RF), but have not really taken off with the exception of maybe Bluetooth (and it's success is limited).
• Monitors: Early monitors were little more then glorified television screens. Which eventually evolved into large CRTs. Now a single computer can have two or more large LCD screens. This was just unimaginable at the time.
• Media Cards: Now that the floppy has gone the way of the dodo, we have media cards and USB drive that come in all shapes and capacities. These media cards allow you to move data quickly from your electronics (such as cameras, MP3 players, etc.) to your computer. The biggest problem with this type of storage is that there are so many standards.
• Networking: Networking personal computers it the early days was very complex. The nightmare was getting the network cards to work properly. Today, its becoming more common for home computers to support Gigabit Ethernet, and brand new homes are now network ready. Let us not forget our friend Wi-Fi (which now support transfer rates at 100Mbps+). Without this technology we would all be at the mercy of some Ethernet jack somewhere.
• Modems: I want to give an honorable mention to our friend the analog Modem. Long before DSL and Cable digital modems existed there was this analog device. The first modem I ever used was a 300Bps on the Apple ][, the last one I ever used was a 56Kbs.
  
• BIOS: One of the few leftovers from the original PC is your computer BIOS. The BIOS (which stands for Basic Input/Output System) is loaded right after you turn your computer on. The information in the BIOS is used to get your computer to load the operating system from the hard drive (or whatever device has your OS). The amazing thing about this technology is how little it has advanced from the early days. The latest innovation in this technology is EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface).
• OS: When the IBM PC first came out, the only real choice of an operating system you had was IBM-DOS (based on MS-DOS). Which was a 16-Bit text based OS that could support 640K, and allow only one program to run at a time. Today, Windows supports 32 or 64-bit applications (depending on which OS you're using), using a graphical user interface, and runs multiple applications and CPUs at the same time. Windows can now also address gigabytes of RAM.
• Keyboards and Mice: These devices like the BIOS have not advanced significantly over the years. There have been some innovations like wireless and optical variants for mice. They have also added some new buttons, wheels, and more ergonomic form factors to these devices.
  
• Media Centers: Inspired by the Tivo DVR (Digital Video Recorder), these computers are targeted to be center of your living room entertainment experience. They will play your music, movies and video, record your TV shows, and more.
  
• Printers: These devices have gone through many evolutionary advances over the years. The original printers were just glorified typewriters, then came dot-matrix, inkjet, then laser printers. The dot-matrix printer was a major evolutionary advancement over the original text printers, because they allowed you to mix graphics with your text. Then inkjet and laser printers, allowed you to do this faster and better. Color has been a fairly recent innovation for these devices. The latest advancements with these devices have been in the multi-function device market, which combines a printer, scanner, and fax functionality into one device.
  
• Cost: Besides advancements in technology, one of the major considerations for buying any of these devices has been the cost of it. I remember when the PCs first dropped under $1000, then a few years later there was the sub-$500 PC market. There was a huge surge in demand for buying these devices. Its now possible to buy a sub-$200 PC from Wal-Mart.
  
• Apple vs. Microsoft: Until fairly recently the Macintosh was always considerably more expensive then the WinTel (Windows/Intel) PC equivalent. Apple has some great technology and software, but it has always had problems competing with Microsoft as far as market share and the amount of available software for the two different platforms.