Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘fancy coming round to my place for a dip?’ is the 65 meter Phoenix 1000 luxury submarine. Designed for those with a penchant for life at 300 meters depth and $78 million in the bank, this sumptuous sub-aquatic cruiser has got it all – including twin passenger decks, a mini sub and 2 x 1100 kW surface diesels capable of propelling the 1500 ton beast 3500 miles at a surface cruising speed…
If it wasn’t for the fact that April 1st had passed already, I would be very suspicious of this story. Headline? Professor hopes to have working time machine by the end of the year. Yes, that was my reaction too. Interesting article [via madville.com]
The PDA screen that talks to you? Matsushita of Japan has apparently come up with a speaker that can be attached to glass and works by vibrating a transparent film with air pressure The company hopes to sell it to PDA and mobile phone makers who will attach the ‘Sound Window’ film to their displays to provide speaker capabilities at low power consumption. [via Asia BizTech]
Every so often a Web application comes along which is just right from the get-go. Well the latest one is Oddpost. It’s an online email service – no wait ,come back – it’s an online email program with a difference. It looks and functions just like MS Outlook Express. No more kludgy Hotmail like tabs and constantly refreshing Web pages, no more fiddling around with different sections of your Web based email. This is more than cool, it’s WAY cool….
Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame has been facing a lot of unwarranted flack recently and he doesn’t deserve it. He does a lot for the subscribers to his free Lockergnome newsletter, and really shouldn’t be attacked simply for trying to make some money out of his countless online ventures. I don’t actually know a harder worker – some would say workaholic – who does so much for nothing, which makes his detractors a little ungrateful perhaps?
Just found this neat implementation of Kazaa, called Kazaa Lite. Apparently offers all the benefits (read 1+ million users) of the Fastrack network and Kazaa client without the spyware or whatever. Check it out here.
Make it so! The Voice Me Infrared Butler is a small $60.00 gizmo which apparently converts voice commands into infrared remote control instructions. The idea is that you program in up to 30 voice commands (e.g. “TV on”), then train the relevant remote controllers and when you say the words, the Butler will send out the appropriate remote control beam to turn on the TV or whatever. The blurb says that the unit can be voice activated from 5m away…
Now that The Sims – with sales of 6.3 million – has officially overtaken Myst to become the most popular commercially retailed computer game of all time (I believe that Freecell is actually the most popular game per se), there are all sorts of articles being written about the future of the genre. This one at CNN Money is a good example, citing as it does the imminent release of Sims Online – a massively multiplayer version of the game…
Ooh ever so naughty, but I love it. The Engrish site provides an hilarious look at some of the weaker Japanese attempts to master the complexities of the English language. Too funny! All your base are….ah fergedaboutit! [via ZZZ]
Hmmm, a new software program from US company Codeweavers promises to let you use your Microsoft Office application on a computer running Linux rather than Windows. The $54.95 CrossOver Office product could really alter the computing landscape, because it basically lets large corporates run their Office applications without needing to buy a Windows licence, which could potentially save them millions of dollars a year. Even more worryingly for Redmond, the company is promising to support additional Windows products by the…
It looks as though fuel cell technology may be on the verge of hitting the big time. Casio have recently reported on successful R&D efforts with their version of the technology which they say will halve the weight of laptops and give them a 20 hour battery life. The company says that it aims to commercialise the technology starting in 2004, although there is no word on possible price levels.
There’s going to be some real jostling going on in the Smartphone market by the end of this year, if the current rash of cool new product announcements is anything to go by. The T919 from Tel.me for instance, promises to give the Sony Ericsson P800 and Nokia 7650 offerings a run for their money, although like these two the price of around 500 plus Euros may be a real turn off for most people. There is also a suspiciously…
Those clever folks at Seiko have upgraded their PDA input device and given it a new name. The InkLink product uses infra red technology to copy from paper to PDA. The device is pocket sized and costs around $100.00. [via Twomobile.com]
How to out-Britney Britney. Taito Corp of Japan and MIT have apparently teamed up to develop a Karaoke machine which can adjust itself to make the vocalist sound good. It does this by adjusting the tempo and pitch of the tune to make the singing more….er…harmonious to the ear. Eventually the system will be able to alter the singer’s voice automatically to put it in tune with the music, which is where I begin to get confused. Just how much…
