Technology, Entertainment, Design, Two Thousand and Seven

TED 2007 kicks off tomorrow.

We've spoken of TED before... You should know what I am talking about.

Bright minds and visionaries gathered in one room talking about how to make the world a better place.

You can see who they've gathered together this year by clicking on the schedule above.

Hopefully, some of these amazing speakers will end up on the TEDtalks podcasts. Fingers crossed.

Get dreaming.

How Much Damage Has Howard Done?

In the early 90s Keating made a concerted push to strengthen our economic and political ties with our neighbours and to locate our nation firmly within the Asia-Pacific region.

Howard, of course, set out to unravel all of that.

Why am I bothering to bitch about that now (especially when that "man" is the cause of so much more evil our country *cough* Hicks *cough* gay marriage *cough*)?

Don't worry, it is nothing if not self-serving.

I want an iPhone.



Or more correctly - I want an iPhone-loompa NOW!

I stayed up this morning to watch Steve Jobs' keynote at Macworld San Francisco and this device is truly revolutionary. It is stunning.



Music, video, photos, phone, email, real web browsing - all in one device. Elegant touch screen technology. Full OS X operating system. I love that Apple has surpassed even the most outlandish speculations people had put out there in the lead up to the announcement. This is going to do to smartphones what the iPod did to the Discman.

But it doesn't come Stateside until June (or is it July?), Europe until the fourth quarter and Asia until 2008.

2008. And we'll only be included then if Fuck-knuckle hasn't undone Keating's work.

On the upside, by that time they may have ironed out any kinks, upped the gigage to more than 8 and improved the battery life (or even a removable battery) because 5 hours won't cut the mustard.

If you want to be amazed, you can stream the Keynote speech from here.

The Future (insert wild choral voices)

I have been marvelling at this for a while so I thought I would share it with you all, just in case you haven't seen it yet.

Recently Apple took out patents for touch screens, adding credence to the heavy rumours circulating of touch screen video iPods. The patents have quite detailed descriptions of how the actual data manipulation may work. Well someone has produced a little mock up of how it could all end up looking.

Nice!



The vid has nothing to do with Apple (though the photo manipulation looks decidedly similar to Apples new pro-ap Aperture). You can check out the patents over at MacRumours.

With Microsoft's new OSX ripoff, Vista, slated for release (finally) at the end of the year, it looks like Apple may be ready to pull the carpet out from underneath them once again by taking things to a whole other level.

Capitalism 4 Litigiousness 4 EVA

iPodding tells of a possible class action lawsuit going ahead against Apple because of the danger of hearing loss:

The iPod players are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss," according to the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana.

Of course it could just be a clever little tactic by Microsoft, who is rumoured to be entering the portable music player arena.

So are they going to go up against Sony, Technics and Paisonic? They all have portable players and I am sure not all of them carry noise reduction features. This is silliness.

Click here for the story.

iPod Lurve!

I know a lot of you have these new-fangled music boxes. I know you spend hours every day "bopping" away to your so-called "rock" music. Well it has come to my attention that you can use your white do-hicky to improve your mind as well as depleting it.

Don once told me:

BTW: I found that Stanford are putting free lectures on itunes. Check it out if you are bored and feeling in need of some intellectual stimulation:

http://itunes.stanford.edu/

So I am giving to you the gift of wisdom. Seriously though, there are a wide range of topics and it is good to hear internal political analysis from the horse's mouth. Besides, you get to listen to that infectious banter that comes before a university lecture.

On a similar note, there is a bucketload of free, out of copyright, movies and audio clips over at http://www.archive.org/. You'll find some lots of old cartoons and silent movies as well as great American propaganda films from the 60s and 70s about the dangers of drugs, pornography and homosexuality. Beautifully kitsch but also a little scary, as the accompanying talkbacks manage to prove that not all that much has changed for some people.

A good example is: Boys Beware (1961).

Check it out! Slip it onto your iPod Video and watch it in the comfort of somebody else's toilet. (snaps to Stop the world Mummy, I want to get off)

UPDATE: Went over to find a little pic from Boys Beware to pop on the post but it seems to have disappeared. I'll leave the link up just in case it irons itself out.