Tech Blog

1. Parisian Oops: A More Realistic Google Ad [Google] -

   Sure, Google's Superbowl ad was cute and left us giggling, but how would a French romance powered by Google really go? [UCB—Thanks, Mackenzie!]

   
   
   
   
   
2. An HD Video Tour of the International Space Station [Space] -

   If you're a huge space buff, you might not be surprised by anything in this video tour of the International Space Station. But it's still great to just get a simple walkthrough of this incredible project and all its corners.

   Anyone else get a bit bit light-headed watching all those twists and turns? [CrunchGear]

   
   
   
   
   
3. Apple Job Posting Suggests Cameras in Future iPads [Rumors] -

   Apple's hiring again and this time they're looking for "Performance QA Engineers" in their "iPad Media" department. Based on the description for the job, we might be seeing an increase in iPad camera rumors:

   The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines.

   Based on the demand for someone to work on video capture frameworks for a device which can't even capture video we could presume that Apple's exploring some future options. As if we didn't already think that. [Apple via MacRumors]

   
   
   
   
   
4. It May Be Creepy, But This Case's Ad Is Popcorn-Worthy [Wtf] -

   I hate spiders, I hate horror movies, and I hate gimmicky computer cases. But I love the commercial for the Lian Li Mini-atx case. Maybe it's just because it reminded me of Steve Irwin.

   There aren't details on availability and pricing for this case, but who cares when the promo video alone is fun. [CrunchGear]

   
   
   
   
   
5. Prepaid Cellphone Users Less Likely to Return Calls [Data] -

   Some folks decided to study the calling habits of 5.3 million people over an 18-month period. 350 million phone calls later, they came to an almost obvious conclusion: Prepaid cellphone users make and return fewer calls than their postpaid counterparts.

   You can click on the image to take a closer look at the graphs.

   Initially the study done at the Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland, was intended to analyze reciprocity—the likelihood of an individual receiving as many calls in return as he or she makes. But during the course of the research, a clear difference was discovered in the calling habits of prepaid and postpaid users:

   Postpaid users tend to be more prolific, having on average 5.41 people they call. Prepaid users, by contrast, have only 3.41 contacts on average (although the notion of "average" is a little strange here since there is a very long tail on these distributions).

   Postpaid users also made about 10 times as many calls as prepaid users while 25 percent of prepaid users had odd relationships in which "one participant makes more than 80 percent of all calls."

   Technology Review suggests that the differences in calling habits could be explained by the fact that prepaid users are more likely to be younger individuals, but I'd go as far as considering that the unlimited mobile-to-mobile or weekend benefits of postpaid plans may play a role as well. [Technology Review via NY Times Bits]

   
   
   
   
   
6. Best Buy's MacBook Pro SKUs Go Missing, Might Mean Core i5 Refresh Soon [Rumor] -

   The upcoming i5 MacBook Pro refresh might be closer than we thought, with TUAW discovering that Best Buy emptied their systems of the current version. Since they're not likely to go MacBook-less for long, that points to soon. [TUAW]

   
   
   
   
   
7. The Scale That Thinks It's a Rug [Concepts] -

   This concept scale that doubles as a decorative rug might—might—be the thing to finally get me taking better care of myself.

   Designer Kwan Sunman's Rug With Scale project does away with the cold, judgmental form factors of your average bathroom scale, ensconcing it instead in a warm and inviting rug. The readout from the scale shows up on a small red tag that illuminates its user's current weight, previous weight, and goal weight to help chart progress.

   The rug portion is also removable (for washing) and interchangeable (for personal style preference). That is, it will be, if this ever becomes an actual, buyable product. Fill in your own "worth the weight" pun here, if so inclined. [Red Dot via Yanko]

   
   
   
   
   
8. Google Wants To Control All Communication [Google] -

   Google's two new announcements: integrating a Twitter-like service into Gmail and a goal of a real-time speech translation service shows what direction they're taking the company: Into the space between you and every other human being on the planet.

   To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The Gmail status update could come as soon as tomorrow, whereas the the speech-to-text-to-speech translation system is still a ways out. You can definitely see just how much work Google needs to do by trying to read your Google Voice voicemail transcriptions. (Voice search works better on Android 2.1 because you're talking slower and enunciating.) But both these features point in the same direction many of the company's other products have been hinting at. Here's a list of Google's major products, in case you forgot, and which sector of communication they want to dominate.

   • Google Voice: This is a big one, and it'll be the most natural interface for Google to slot in the voice-translation into. If you're using it the way Google wants you to use it, you're already piping all your voice calls and SMS through Google's tubes. And refining speech to text gives them a good idea of your interests and what you're talking about, allowing them to better serve up the relevant ads to you during calls.

   • Gmail: Having access to at least one end of everyone's email conversations, outside of business emails, gives Google the ability to be a gateway for most of your written communications. But that's not enough for Google, which is why they developed...

   • Google Wave: It's email, message boards, chat rooms and collaboration software all in one, except every participant needs a Google account. This closes that "openness" loophole that email has, and forces everyone into Google's biosphere. So this, and Gmail, should make sure that every medium-length communique passes through Google's maw for analysis. But what about shorter and longer forms? Update: Thanks commenters, for reminding me that Google made Wave open, so people can create their own Wave servers to talk to each other with the Wave protocol. The point still remains, that if you were going to use a service, wouldn't you rather use the service from the company that created the protocol, for performance and feature reasons?

   • Google Docs: For longer documents.

   • Google Talk: For short blasts of instant messaging, video chats and some audio chatting.

   • Picasa and YouTube: Communication doesn't have to be all text-based, you putting your photos and videos online count too.

   • Android and Chrome OS: By getting you down at the operating system level, Google can theoretically know every kind of communication you perform. It knows who you talk to, how you do it and when you do it. It can even shape the how by delivering the experience themselves.

   • Everything else. There's Checkout, Finance, Maps, Reader, News and other apps, which fill in the other forms of communication or expression that aren't quite covered by the major products above. One major missing piece is social networking, where Google basically failed before with its Orkut service (except for Brazil), so this new Twitter/Gmail hybrid might be their next entrance into the space.

   

   But why do they want these things? Why would Google want to be the middleman between you and the world? To sell you ads, of course. And don't think Google is going to stop at just helping you talk over the internet or over the phone, they're going to reach into meatspace as well. How? One step is making that speech-to-speech translation portable, so you can do a sort of near-field communication with someone else with the same device while at the same time being able to look them in the face. Then, blast you two with the appropriate ads on the billboard next to you.

   
   
   
   
   
9. Why Paint Your Room When You Can Get a Color-Changing Wall Instead [Concept] -

   See this wall of colorful squares? It's actually a concept design consisting of a bunch of small triangular panels which can be spun 'round on whim to change the way your room looks. Or to spell out naughty things.

   Ok, so the concept photos only spell out "S-E-X" which won't make too many people giggle and blush, but just imagine the potential ways you could satisfy your inner decorating perv. And even without that silliness, it's still a pretty neat thought that you could completely change the look of a room without having to reach for the paint buckets. [Yanko Design]

   
   
   
   
   
10. Microsoft Blames Your Laptop—Not Windows 7—For Battery Issues [Microsoft] -

    After upgrading to Windows 7, some users saw a new warning message suggesting that they need to replace their laptops' batteries. Some screamed "bug," some shouted "conspiracy,' but Microsoft denies that anything's wrong.

    In an entry on Microsoft's MSDN blog, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky explains that the warning message is a new feature in Windows 7 and that's why some users are seeing it for the first time on laptops which appeared to run just fine under a different OS:

    To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.

    He continues to say that this has all the "appearance of Windows 7 'causing' the change in performance, but in reality all Windows 7 did was report what was already the case."

    It's not their OS, it's your laptop's lousy battery. Or at least that's the story we're sticking with for now. [MSDN Blog via CNET]