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Meguru: Japan’s bamboo-powered electric car (videos)

Posted: 21 May 2010 04:41 AM PDT

It looks much like a rickshaw, but the so-called Meguru [JP] is more of an electric car than a human-powered cart. Jointly developed by Osaka-based Yodogawa and Kinki Knives Industries, the Meguru is powered by a lithium-ion battery that, once fully charged, offers a travel distance of 25 miles. The vehicle, which is actually registered as a car, reaches a top speed of 25mph.

But the main selling point is obviously the design, with the Meguru featuring a flooring made from real bamboo and fan-shaped doors made from washi, Japanese wood pulp paper. It was first shown to the general public last year.

Yodogawa and Kinki Knives are planning to commercialize the vehicle with a $10,000 price tag.

Here’s a video showing Meguru in action:

Here’s another video (in Japanese) that offers insight on how the Meguru was actually built (skip to the 1.45min mark if you don’t understand Japanese):

Via Japan Trends

Video: Toshiba’s amazing, tactile feedback-based UI solution for touchpanels

Posted: 21 May 2010 03:41 AM PDT

Many hardware makers, especially in the mobile device area, are betting high on touchscreens to let users interact with their products. Toshiba subsidiary Toshiba Information Systems has now developed the “New Sensation UI Solution”, which is supposed to make user interaction via touchscreens more intuitive through tactile feedback.

While this approach isn’t new in itself, Toshiba’s technology is different from other solutions as it doesn’t actually “move” hardware through actuators. Instead, the system is based on a special film that’s affixed to the touchpanel. That film, made by a Finnish company called Senseg, gives tactile feedback to the user when he or she touches the screen, charging the film.

And the system’s pretty flexible, too. For example, users will get the sensation of touching a stone when their fingers move over a screen showing an image of one. Toshiba says the sensation returned to the user if the display shows a piece of wood, metal or other objects, is completely different. The system (obviously) works with PC touchpads, too.

What also sounds cool is that the film can be affixed to uneven surfaces, too, meaning your next phone could give you tactile feedback not only from the display but also from the back cover.

According to Toshiba Information Systems, the film will cost between $0.10 and $0.20 in mass-production. The first e-book readers, notebooks and cell phones using the technology are expected to come out next year.

Here’s a video providing more details:

Don’t get caught drinking pop without a mustache ever again!

Posted: 20 May 2010 07:48 PM PDT


Here in Seattle these wouldn’t sell well, because pretty much everybody already has a mustache. Seriously, almost everybody. I guess the ladies might enjoy these novelty bottle-toppers — the ladies who can’t grow a decent ’stache, anyway.

Here’s the thing. These aren’t actually on the market yet, they’re a prospective product that NEEDS YOUR HELP to get out there. And why shouldn’t you? Go pledge a buck or ten for these poor sons of guns. They went through design school and this is the only thing they could come up with, so they’re trying to make money to go to a different design school. It’s a vicious cycle, I know, but what else are we supposed to do with art and design majors?

Now there are green ones, too. Haven’t seen that before.

And yeah, I say “pop.” That going to be a problem?

Google just shot cable’s Franz Ferdinand

Posted: 20 May 2010 06:41 PM PDT


One could be forgiven for writing off Google TV. After all, there are precedents for web TV failures (Apple TV) and precedents for ostentatious Google windmill-tilting (Wave, Buzz, a dozen others), so I don’t blame the doubters. I’d be one but for the fact that this is too big to be an experiment; it’s a declaration of war. The question is: against whom?

Against Apple? Yes, to some extent. Against set-top boxes? In a way. But primarily, I think it’s against the TV providers. Not in a direct way: as many have noted, Google TV, being a delivery system, relies entirely on others for its content. No, Google is leaning on Comcast and DirecTV and all them indirectly. Like the music industry and Napster, or the mobile phone industry and the iPhone, it’s less a direct assault and more an ultimatum: “Change or die.”

Let’s just address the Apple and set-top box issues first. Is Google sucker-punching Apple? Kind of — with the Froyo announcement, they clearly have Cupertino in their sights. But Apple TV isn’t really a vital target. When was the last time you saw one? Does anyone know what it even does? There are external hard drives with more functionality. Google’s not attacking them, but it may be attacking the iTunes hegemony. Google TV will be pulling its shows from the your cable or from web sources, whichever is more convenient. I guarantee they’re going to make it unbelievably easy — easier than iTunes — to watch, buy, and so on. But iTunes is dug in and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Google can bide their time there — and flank them.

As for set-top boxes: it’s unclear just how much functionality the Logitech hardware will have, and whether Google TV will allow for mods and apps that provide Popcorn Hour or Boxee-level media management. Boxee has said they see Google TV as complementary rather than competition, but that kind of soft-pedaling is expected on announcement day. Set-top boxes, DVRs, and in-TV web stuff is a real muddle right now; the average TV buyer will almost certainly be bewildered by the options and mystified by the arbitrary limitations. Think of Google TV as being for TVs what Google Maps is for location. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with it, but they don’t do nearly everything themselves: they provide a foundation. I’m thinking (hoping) that Google TV will be similar. There’s more to ask when it comes to home theater PCs: are HTPCs, like Brontosaurus, simply too big to live? I suspect they’ll remain as the hardcore collector’s delivery method of choice. Offline, as hi-def as you want, and under your control. They just won’t be big time.

So it’s a holding action against Apple and an encouraging shoulder-punch to the set-top box community. What’s the main objective? Force the cable and satellite giants’ hands. The providers have fought channels a la carte and other seemingly obvious advances in TV-watching for years now because they’re a threat to the 20-year-old money tree called basic cable. They’ve been dragging their feet for a decade, adding internet functionality piece by piece, but now that Google has thrown their hat into the ring, they have to get serious. They may have inertia, but Google has momentum. But don’t get any romantic notions about this being a David versus Goliath moment. This is just New and Improved Goliath versus Goliath Classic.

Not that Google TV is going to be any great shakes when it actually hits. TVs are already semi-web-connected, and competitors like Yahoo! have plenty of time to craft a credible competitor. Google will just be another brand for a while, but like Android, it will be cheap and plentiful, and always improving. Whenever anyone leaves Yahoo’s system or Vizio’s built-in web widgets, they’ll go to Google, the way feature phone upgraders and WinMo refugees are adopting Android in herds. Like other Google products, it’ll launch incomplete and pick up steam as it goes.

So why is it a threat to cable providers? Simple. Who wants to pay for two pipes? When I went to Comcast’s site to browse for alternative services, the option of getting internet through them was frustratingly obscured behind package deals and cable TV. What if I don’t want TV? Unpossible! Customers are led to believe that there are two distinct pipes running side by side into their house: TV and internet. Sure, that once was the case (and may still be in some areas, admittedly (though not for long)), but it sure as hell isn’t any more, and Comcast is terrified that the subscribing population at large will find out. That’s why they don’t want to give out a la carte: in order to offer options, you must first admit that options exist. If it were up to them, we’d all buy one magical pipe that gives us 100 channels (say for $60) and another pipe that gives us high-speed internet ($50), and never know that in fact, it’s all a big stream of 1s and 0s coming from the big digital content provider in the sky.

Furthermore, the traditional advertising models, pretty much set down in the early days of radio (content, more content after these messages, ads, more content) are all kinds of fun to cling to. I don’t blame them. A million dollars for 30 viewer seconds that will probably be skipped past? Sure, sign here, and we have a nice bridge for sale, too.

DVRs (and eventually Hulu) have done some damage to this concept, but it’s easier for people to think of them as magic VCRs with a tape you never have to rewind. By taking the familiar Google concepts and brands traditionally associated with the internet and putting them on your TV, practically unaltered, Google is rubbing the viewer’s nose in it: It’s all data! Can’t you see?! Data coming through the pipe! Don’t be a fool!

It takes a certain confluence of circumstances to make a new technology or delivery method seem legit to consumers, even though the tech may have been around for years. AOL legitimized “the internet.” iTunes legitimized digital media downloads (Apple is good at this; they’ve legitimized several things). Google is in the process of legitimizing internet-connected TV, even though Yahoo and Samsung and all the others have been kicking it around for a year and a half now. They were doing it at their own rate. Now they’ll have to do it at Google’s rate.

But we already have weather widgets and on-demand and Boxee and TiVo! Yeah, and we already had Nomads and ball mice and candy bar phones — until we had something else. Google’s taking an extant concept and making it simpler and better, or so we hope — it’s kind of what they do. Unfortunately for cable providers, that concept is analogous to net neutrality in your TV — let’s call it “pipe parity,” in which viewers know that it’s all just data coming from some datacenter somewhere and being turned into video by a box in their home. The more prevalent Google TV and nascent pipe parity is (having it in Sony TVs is, no doubt, only the beginning), the more cable and satellite providers will have to provide for it. As the insensibility of their double-dipping becomes more and more evident to viewers, they’ll have to accommodate, though it’ll be a while before any serious changes take place. Satellite, for instance, may not have much of a place in the hierarchy in a couple years outside of getting content to the savage prairies where cable hath spread not its high-bandwidth tentacles.

And of course Google will have to accommodate the providers, as well: after all, it’s NBC or CBS or FOX that creates, licenses, and owns the content every Google TV viewer will want. It goes both ways — but it’s been a long time since it’s gone any way but the networks’. People have been clicking between channels by hitting the up and down buttons for a good 60 years now: it’s practically inborn. TV providers have been capitalizing on it for exactly as long, but now as bandwidth and accessibility catch up to television and movies as they caught up to music seven or eight years ago, they’ll have to switch their game up if they want to stay afloat. Otherwise they’ll end up like the music industry: a criminally obstinate, publicly mocked pariah, with their asses hanging in the wind, suing the customers they chiseled for half a century, and whining all the way to the poorhouse. Christ, good riddance! Let’s hope Comcast doesn’t end up the same way. Actually, on second thought, I’d pay good money to see that.

It’ll take some time, and I’m guessing there are things Google isn’t telling us. Other big players like Netflix, iTunes, TiVo, and so on will have a say in the new order — no sense pretending they’re going to disappear. But I don’t think this is a lark on Google’s part. Like they said, they want a piece of the 4-billion strong TV market, and they’re going to get it one way or another. What remains to be seen is who will ride shotgun — and who will get thrown under the bus.

Is the Next Prius Going To Be A Tesla?

Posted: 20 May 2010 06:11 PM PDT


Toyota and Tesla announced a new partnership at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto today, the auto makers will collaborate on technology, the development of new electric vehicles and Toyota will purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock. The press conference featured the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk and TMC President, Akio Toyoda.

Calling it an “explosion” for California (I think he meant this in the positive sense, not the Terminator sense) Schwarzenegger framed it as a victory for California’s environmental agenda and the economy. He predicts it will create 1,000 jobs for the state’s embattled economy.


Who cares about a damn QWERTY remote? Your phone is the only remote you need

Posted: 20 May 2010 02:53 PM PDT


Everybody is waiting on Logitech’s vaunted QWERTY controller, and probably speculating on the various other ones that will be popping up in the next couple of months. The Google TV hardware will probably have several flavors by the time it’s actually in stores, but why do we care about the clicker? You already own the clicker. It’s your phone, fool!

Sure, at the beginning, it’ll be more familiar to have a dedicated device for controlling your TV. That’s the way it’s been for a long time. But think about it: is Google going to pass up the opportunity to add such a powerful function to phones? Logitech already has a Harmony app for Android, for god’s sake. The dedicated remote will be giving way shortly to the all-purpose handheld communications device; the new remote is just here to soften the blow for people not ready to make the change. But once they realize they can have one less doodad sitting around needing batteries, I think they’ll come around.

I like the Harmony remotes too, but let’s be honest — the convergence thing isn’t going to end well for them. In all likelihood, Logitech will start offering Harmony remotes that run Android! Why not? Anyway, I guarantee that it won’t be long before the whole remote thing hits the bricks.

Prima strategy guides now on Steam. Yup, Prima still makes strategy guides!

Posted: 20 May 2010 01:00 PM PDT

Got an e-mail from the good folks at Steam a few moments ago detailing a new feature y’all might be interested in. I mean, the only thing anyone is going to care about today is Google TV, but I’ll do what I can to distract you from that for a moment. The deal is that Prima Guides are now available for use in-game. You know, via that shift+tab overlay thing.

The service has launched with a few guides: Dragon Age: Origins, Just Cause 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell: Conviction. That’s an eclectic group to kick things off with.

Of course, you can read the guides outside of Steam, too.

The guides are usually $19.99, but they’re $9.99 as part of some introductory offer.

Which brings us to an unofficial poll: what was the last strategy game you bought? I’m thinking mine was Final Fantasy VIII way back in 1999.

Then I found GameFaqs…

StarCraft II to be censored for South Korean release

Posted: 20 May 2010 12:30 PM PDT


When I read this headline, I thought there must have been some mistake. I mean, as we all know, StarCraft is the life-blood of South Korea. How can Blizzard release a gimped version of the game over there? 1up calls it “heavily edited,” and perhaps “censored” is as much an overstatement as “heavily edited” is an understatement. The game was given a provisional AO rating over there, and now Blizzard has rejiggered and resubmitted it, with black blood instead of red, toned-down smoking references, and less “vulgar” language.

Remember, this is a game where you send soldiers to gruesome, extraterrestrial death by the thousand.

I guess it’s not such a big deal, but it’s depressing to see something so deeply embedded in the national identity of the crisis being compromised by spurious and arbitrary “moral values.” Blizzard is considering releasing an intact version separately, which I’m sure they must do, as that will be considered the “definitive version” and if they don’t, someone will just write a 100MB hack that fixes everything.

It’s a bit like when a director makes a movie, and then the producer or studio thinks they need to add this or that, cut out this scene, give the protagonist a CG sidekick… of course we’ll all wait for the director’s cut. No doubt StarCraft II will arrive in the US whole, cigarette references and all, and with stuff like Bulletstorm already threatening our impressionable youth, I don’t think the moral pundits here in the states will even bat an eyelash.

Accordion Players Step into the L.A. Spotlight

Posted: 20 May 2010 12:05 PM PDT

Get ready to unleash your inner Weird Al Yankovic and sign up for the Roland U.S. V-Accordion Festival!

This headbanging event will be held in Los Angeles (home to the Van Halen, Motley Crue, Ratt, and other well-known accordion-influenced bands) on Saturday, September 18. Aspiring accordion artists can submit application videos until July 15.

If that dusty old thing you found in Grandpa Hertzel’s attic isn’t cutting it anymore, you can pick up a snazzy new Roland V-Accordion. The company features 14 models, ranging in price from about $1,300 to $3,600. You can even rock a threatening instrument like the white-with-tribal-accents Fr-1b accordion pictured here.

Don’t forget, guitar virtuoso Steve Vai started his musical career as an accordion player. So add some waltz machines into your gadget arsenal.

Eric Schmidt Presides Over The Marriage Of The 50-Year-Old TV And The Teenage Web

Posted: 20 May 2010 11:24 AM PDT

"We've been waiting a long time for today," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is presiding over a power panel of CEOs helping to make Google TV possible. The panel, at Google I/O, includes the CEOs of Sony, Best Buy, Echostar, Adobe, Logitech, and, of course, Google. He needs all of them, as well as developers, to make his new Google TV a hit. Google TV will be built into a new Sony TV coming out this fall in time for the holiday shopping season, as well a Logitech TV companion box which can be hooked up to existing TVs with an HDMI port. It is Google's attempt to bring together the 50-year-old TV-watching experience with the Web. It does that in a variety of ways,from a universal search box which searches both TV and the Web to opening up the TV as an application platform for developers and media companies to enhance their video offerings. Its ambition is to bring the Web into the TV in a new way.


Google TV Unveiled. It’s All About The Ad Reach

Posted: 20 May 2010 11:21 AM PDT

Today at Google I/O, the company made the announcement that everyone was waiting for — Google TV. While some glitches in the demo (with the Bluetooth keyboard) prevented it from being a "wow" moment, the implications are pretty clear what Google is going for. That is, the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or rather, advertising to the 4 billion TV users worldwide.

Google noted that while computer usage is huge with 1 billion users, and mobile is even bigger with 2 billion users, TV is the real massive medium with 4 billion users around the world. Further, Google notes that people spend 5 hours a day on average in the U.S. watching TV — and that's more than ever before. Then the real stat came out. 70 billion dollars. that's the annual ad spend on television in U.S. alone.

Read more…

HTC: If your phone came out in 2010, it’ll probably get Android 2.2

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:59 AM PDT

So you just bought the Android 2.1-powered Droid Incredible, or locked in a pre-order for the HTC EVO 4G.. and now Google’s gone and announced Android 2.2. Great.

Don’t fret; if your phone started shipping in 2010 (read: the Droid Incredible, myTouch Slide, EVO 4G, Desire), it’ll almost certainly get the upgrade treatment, according to HTC.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Voice Over Revision A to power Verizon Wireless’ iPhone?

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:45 AM PDT

Will the iPhone come out for Verizon Wireless? It's the question that so many of the service's subscribers would like to see answered definitively. This news story, unfortunately, won't do that. What it will do, however, is fan the flames of the rumor fire. The latest is that the phone would work with Voice Over Revision A. In English that means the phone would be able to handle both voice and data connections simultaneously.


Oprah Moment, Take 2: Google gives an EVO 4G to everyone at I/O

Posted: 20 May 2010 09:44 AM PDT

Okay. Think back to elementary school. Your buddy got a brand new toy for Christmas — the one you’ve been wanting for months. Your parents got you socks. Remember that feeling? That feeling of loss for something you never had? That’s called jealousy, friend. Now magnify that by a hundred.

Google just gave everyone at I/O the EVO 4G.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Carnaby: Pioneer’s very special car navigation mini robot (videos)

Posted: 20 May 2010 09:21 AM PDT

What do you get when you cross a car navigation system with a wacky mini robot? You get Carnaby [JP], a very special piece of hardware developed by Pioneer and robot venture iXs. The in-car robot may look weird, but it actually serves a good purpose: it makes car navigation systems more accessible for the elderly and those with hearing disabilities.

The way Carnaby works is pretty simple. As it basically is supposed to be a visual help, the insectoid will move up its left arm when it’s time to turn left and its right arm before you’re supposed to turn right. The closer you come, the faster it flaps its wings (and the robot’s eyes then start glowing, too).

Pioneer is currently thinking about how and when to commercialize the robot, but I am asking myself if you should drive a car if you have difficulties following the instructions given by regular navigation systems in the first place.

Here are two short videos showing Carnaby in action:

Via Node [JP] via Akihabara News

Google officially announces Android 2.2, or “Froyo”

Posted: 20 May 2010 09:16 AM PDT

It’s official! As expected, Google has officially announced Android 2.2 at their I/O conference this morning. Click through for the list of new goodies.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Would America support a national broadband tax or is that too ‘big government’?

Posted: 20 May 2010 09:00 AM PDT

The Cousins were mulling over a broadband tax, but the new Government has put a stop to that. (Now they’re considering using some of the BBC license fee to fund broadband development.) The idea was to charge people 50p (around $0.70) per month to fund the expansion of broadband into rural areas. Would such a move work here in the U.S.? Would you be willing to pay, say, $1 per month, paying toward some sort of Broadband Fund, to ensure that people in the middle of nowhere have access to reliable broadband? What’s more American than wanting to help your neighbors?

The UK plan, as I understand it, was supposed tack on an additional 50p (that’s read “fifty pence”—watching Sky Sports News has made me familiar with the Pound Sterling, especially during football transfer season) to your monthly tax bill. Doing some maths, that works out to £6 per year. That’s £6 per year to ensure that the fine people of Hull and the North East have access to broadband.

Let’s take that idea and apply it to us here in the U.S. You send the IRS an additional ~$10 every April, ~$10 that goes to a Broadband Fund. That money is then used to develop a modern broadband infrastructure in places that otherwise would go without. I don’t know if the good people of, say, Wyoming or Nebraska currently have access to 100 mbps broadband, but it sure would be useful.

Imagine an entire United States of America wired for broadband! And by “broadband” I don’t mean some crummy DSL service that’s marginally faster than AOL dial-up. No, I’m talking 100 mbps at a minimum for everyone. What better way to spur the likes of Netflix to increase the quality of its streaming movies? (I shudder to compare a Blu-ray with a Netflix stream!) Maybe Hulu could bump up the resolution (while dialing down the compression) of “Parks and Recreation”?

Broadband for everyone! Who’s with me?


Don’t cry for the workers at Foxconn

Posted: 20 May 2010 08:05 AM PDT


I’ve been interested in gadget manufacturing for a while now and, as I reported a few months ago, things are pretty bad but they’ve been worse. Now, however, we’re seeing clusters of suicides at Foxconn as well as an undercover “report” from Foxconn’s “Hell Factory.” I’m calling bull.

First, consider that Foxconn has 400,000 employees in Shenzhen alone. Cleveland, Ohio has 478,403 residents as of the 2000 census and I suspect that’s gone down. You’re not amazed by the number of suicides in Cleveland, right? It’s par for the course. People go nuts in Cleveland, even though they have a great meat market and the Cleveland Clinic is really nice. People don’t want to live, sometimes, right?

As for working conditions – the dead eyes, the exhausted employees, the beatings – well, that happens in Cleveland, too. When a mass of humanity coalesces into one place all sorts of things happen. People get tired. People die. People are abused. People abuse.

Look: we built Foxconn. Sure, Taiwan built the factory proper, but we build the demand. We want free feature phones and we want them now. We want $500 laptops. We want 60-inch TVs for $999. We want, we want, and we want. Steve Jobs isn’t standing on a table with a whip, exhorting these employees to apply the ceramic back to the iPhone HD more quickly. These people, as many reporters better than I note, (read Factory Girlsand Country Driving) need these jobs and they do everything we do to get a better deal. Foxconn is successful because it can mobilize an army to manufacture your cellphone. But China is changing and they won’t be able to pull many more shenanigans. The workers are gaining power and when that happens, watch out.

Manufacturing is a shitty business. It really is. Every factory I’ve visited, from fine watch factories in the mountains of Germany to a place where they make promotional USB keys, is soul-taking and deadening. Those who lament that manufacturing jobs have left the US never worked in manufacturing. Ten out ten college graduates don’t want to sit and solder 5,000 USB connectors to 5,000 PCB boards a day. Heck, we can’t even get Americans to work in slaughterhouses.

But the factory gives the employees a living wage, offers them respite from the poverty and strictures of the countryside, and creates the potential for advancement. They didn’t have that before they walked through the factory gates.

We used to manufacture things in America until we got smart. Then we sent manufacturing further and further afield and, I would wager, none of us understand the true nature of manufacturing. Two generations have gone by since the last real steel barons led the world in production and we look back on those days with nostalgia. My grandfather Herman worked in the Wheeling Steel plant. They lived in company housing, ate company food, and lived a company life until they made a little money and moved into town. I doubt he was fulfilled, but it was a job. His step-son, my father, graduated from college and went to work for the government at a warehouse – one step away from manufacturing. Now I, his coddled son, get to dick around on the Internet all day. Give the Chinese another fifty years and they’ll have shipped all their manufacturing to Mars and they’ll dick around on the Internet as well.

Go ahead: Cry for the folks at Foxconn. Rail against the injustice. But if you follow the money, you’ll realize the injustice stems from our desire to have more in more ways. So much crap comes out of China it boggles the mind. But someone is buying that crap. Someone, somewhere, is taking what China makes and they’re taking it every second of every day.

Our neophilia knows no limits. The Evo 4G just came out today. Hoopty doo. It’s another phone that was built by another person on an assembly line in China. Want to know why more amazing stuff doesn’t leak out of Foxconn? Because the employees don’t care. A phone is a phone is a phone and they can’t afford a new one anyway.

I always say this: vote with your dollar. Don’t upgrade your phones every five months. Don’t throw away your old PC. Work with what you have. There is no sane reason for a laptop to cost under $300. But they exist. Manufacturers figured out that people who see devices as disposable will buy more and more of them. Do research, buy what you think is best, and hold onto it. Then Foxconn can shut down.

Then what happens to those 400,000 people? I don’t know, but we’d better be ready for them because they kicked our ass in manufacturing and they’re about to kick our ass in everything else as well.

Apple changes its tune, will now accept cash for the iPad at the Apple Store

Posted: 20 May 2010 08:00 AM PDT

Who didn’t see this coming? A few days ago we learned of one woman’s inability to buy an Apple iPad with cash at an Apple Store. Store policy was such that they would only accept credit cards or debit cards. Apple was totally in the right legally, but it came across sorta funky, particularly given the woman’s backstory. Well, after a few days of bad press Apple has changed the policy: you can now walk into any Apple Store and buy an iPad with cash.

Apple issued the following statement to KGO-TV, the station where this story first broke:

About a month ago, we said we’d like you to use a credit card when you buy your iPad, and that was the best way we could think of to make sure that people only bought two per individual. And then it came to our attention that Diane [Campbell], through your story, was very interested in buying an iPad with cash, and we made a decision today to change that.

That’s that, then.

As of right now, you should be able to walk into your local Apple Store and walk out with a shiny, new iPad having paid cash.

A victory for the little guy, for sure.


Hitachi Maxell develops magnetic tape cartridge with 50TB capacity

Posted: 20 May 2010 07:41 AM PDT

Just in January this year, we reported about a very special magnetic tape that was developed by Fujifilm and IBM and that stores a whopping 35TB of data. But yesterday Hitachi Maxell has announced that its new high-capacity magnetic tape even offers 50TB. No wonder Maxell and and its partner in the development of the tape, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, are speaking of a “world record”.

The tape boasts a density of 45.0Gb/in2 (69.8Mb/mm2), as opposed to the 29.5 billion bits per square inch Fujifilm/IBM offered. Maxell says that by using a special, super-thin film that was developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology, future tape cartridges could even exceed 50TB in storage capacity.

Expect the new tapes to be used by data centers in the not too distant future.

Via Akihabara News
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