Archive for 09/14/14
Christmas Lights: Origins, an electrifying Christmas story
Everyone likes Christmas lights, but have you ever wondered
how they were invented? Well, someone at Gizmodo sure did. They have an
extensive post detailing how the world went from the first electric
light bulb to the first Christmas lights setup.
In the olden days, people used candles but that was before Thomas Edison came along. As one of the pioneers of electricity and light bulbs (plus a bit of talent for showmanship) he was the perfect guy to kickstart the whole Christmas light decoration thing.
Anyway, Gizmodo’s article traces the story of the little joy bringing lights from the dark ages, through the first ad for Christmas trees and finally arriving at the most popular types of lights available today.
And to finish things off, here’s a video that demonstrates what happens when you take a nice, simple concept and decide to turbo charge it.
Yep, it’s a giant house with eyes or maybe some guy really wanted to turn his house into a giant pinball machine.
Anyway, here’s the Gizmodo article. When you plug in the lights this Christmas, you’d be satisfied to know how they came about.
In the olden days, people used candles but that was before Thomas Edison came along. As one of the pioneers of electricity and light bulbs (plus a bit of talent for showmanship) he was the perfect guy to kickstart the whole Christmas light decoration thing.
Anyway, Gizmodo’s article traces the story of the little joy bringing lights from the dark ages, through the first ad for Christmas trees and finally arriving at the most popular types of lights available today.
And to finish things off, here’s a video that demonstrates what happens when you take a nice, simple concept and decide to turbo charge it.
Yep, it’s a giant house with eyes or maybe some guy really wanted to turn his house into a giant pinball machine.
Anyway, here’s the Gizmodo article. When you plug in the lights this Christmas, you’d be satisfied to know how they came about.
First leaked screenshots of Samsung Bada OS
Soon after the official Samsung Bada OS presentation
last week, the first screenshots made their way online. The new OS is a
definite looker and you can really tell it’s based on Samsung’s current
non-smartphone TouchWiz UI.
Now here’s a another set of screenshots…
I can’t stop seeing this as a colorful cocktail of TouchWiz, Android and a pinch of Symbian, but hey that’s just me.
It will be a lot of time before we see a working Bada smartphone, but Samsung will surely enter the fray with a nice set of wheels.
Now here’s a another set of screenshots…
I can’t stop seeing this as a colorful cocktail of TouchWiz, Android and a pinch of Symbian, but hey that’s just me.
It will be a lot of time before we see a working Bada smartphone, but Samsung will surely enter the fray with a nice set of wheels.
Movie posters rampage – Clash of the Titans, TRON and Iron Man 2
Three new official movie posters made my day – Iron Man 2, Clash of
the Titans and TRON, while The Sorcerer’s Apprentice received its first
theatrical trailer.
The new Iron Man 2 seems to show a villain this time, even if it looks more like someone form the Prince of Persia universe.
All the three movies will hit the white screens in 2010 and are scheduled for 7 May (Iron Man 2), 26 March (Clash of the Titans) and December (TRON).
Meantime Apple published the first trailer for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The production is in the blockbuster hand of the duo Jon Turteltaub (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer). Their previous combo – National Treasure and its sequel – did work out quite well, so I am expecting another good adventure film
The new Iron Man 2 seems to show a villain this time, even if it looks more like someone form the Prince of Persia universe.
All the three movies will hit the white screens in 2010 and are scheduled for 7 May (Iron Man 2), 26 March (Clash of the Titans) and December (TRON).
Meantime Apple published the first trailer for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The production is in the blockbuster hand of the duo Jon Turteltaub (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer). Their previous combo – National Treasure and its sequel – did work out quite well, so I am expecting another good adventure film
Google Chrome released in beta for Mac and Linux, along with extensions support
A few days ago Google released betas for both Mac and Linux
for public download. In addition, the extensions gallery is up and
running for Windows and Linux and you can check the available plug-ins
just now. Mac extensions are also on their way, but are still in early
state.
Google have been cooking Mac and Linux versions of their Chrome desktop browser for quite a while, and until recently they had only unstable alpha releases. Well, now you are welcome to download and try the new public beta version. And please enjoy the introduction of the Chrome for Mac from one of the chief engineers, who made all this possible.
The long awaited Chrome extensions support also entered the beta stage and can be used in the Windows and Linux versions of the Google’s own browsers. Obviously, the Mac support still needs more work before it’s ready for primetime.
Google have been cooking Mac and Linux versions of their Chrome desktop browser for quite a while, and until recently they had only unstable alpha releases. Well, now you are welcome to download and try the new public beta version. And please enjoy the introduction of the Chrome for Mac from one of the chief engineers, who made all this possible.
The long awaited Chrome extensions support also entered the beta stage and can be used in the Windows and Linux versions of the Google’s own browsers. Obviously, the Mac support still needs more work before it’s ready for primetime.
Bubble wrap calendar counts the days of 2010, reduces stress, me likes it
If you are looking for a stress-relieving calendar and you are already tired of all those pseudo motivational photos,
you might want to check this out. The 2010 Bubble calendar gives you a
poster-sized piece of bubble wrap, where you need to pop one balloon
each day to track the date.
Having a calendar like that one can be quite amusing. I just don’t know if any of the bubbles will survive the first day of month cause I’d have to buy myself a separate roll of bubble wrap just to keep my hands off that thing. At least it’s a good thing the roll of bubble wrap is cheap. And that is something I can’t say about this calendar.
Any takers, please, prepare 19.99 US dollars and proceed to the source link.
Having a calendar like that one can be quite amusing. I just don’t know if any of the bubbles will survive the first day of month cause I’d have to buy myself a separate roll of bubble wrap just to keep my hands off that thing. At least it’s a good thing the roll of bubble wrap is cheap. And that is something I can’t say about this calendar.
Any takers, please, prepare 19.99 US dollars and proceed to the source link.
Dell Vostro V13 laptop is only 16.5mm thick, costs a quarter of Dell Adamo XPS
If you’re suffering from Apple MacBook Air or Dell Adamo XPS cravings
this just might be your lucky day. Meet the Dell Vostro V13 – it’s a
16.5mm thick 13-incher that brings very much the same specs as the Dell
Adamo XPS, but at a netbook-scale price.
Okay, I’ll admit that the XPS 9.9mm thickness for a laptop sounds (and looks) amazing – it can even put most smartphones to shame. But the price is just too hard to swallow. The Dell Vostro V13 on the other hand is actually reasonably priced… though it’s only available in Singapore right now. Which isn’t a big deal, considering it’s not quite official yet (though it’s up on the Dell Sinagpore website, specs and all).
First off, things are not quite as rosy – 16.5mm is just the thinnest part of the of the Vostro V13, at its thickest it’s 19.7 mm. But that still is only a hair thicker than the MacBook Air. Anyway, let’s see what we get for our money. The Dell Vostro V13 is a 13.3″ laptop with 1366 x 768 pixels resolution (the MacBook Air has 1280 x 800).
For the CPU you have a choice between Intel Core2 Duo SU7300 (1.3GHz, 3MB L2 cache), Intel Core2 Solo SU3500 (1.4GHz, 3MB L2 cache), Intel Celeron 743 (1.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache), all of them of the ultra-low voltage variety (the Adamo XPS has Intel Core2 Duo 1.4GHz ULV CPU).
A better look at the Dell Vostro V13
So far so good. The Dell Vostro V13 also sports goodies like up to 4GB DDR3 RAM 1066MHz, 802.11n support, gesture-controlled touchpad, 2 USB ports, one of which is a USB/eSATA combo, 34mm ExpressCard, 5-in-1 card reader, 1.3MP webcam.
For the OS, the choice ranges from anything from Ubuntu Linux, through Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional. The graphics are a bit disappointing – Intel GMA 4500MHD. The same holds for the storage memory – there is no SSD option. Not that you can put “SSD” and “cheap” in the same sentance. And obviously you don’t get an aluminum body or the touch-enabled latch that opens the Dell Adamo XPS.
Still, the Dell Vostro V13 price is only 450 US dollars, so the non-aluminum body doesn’t seem like such a loss. That price will probably be valid only for the Intel Celeron Ubuntu OS version. Since the Vostro V13 is still not announced properly, the price situation is a little unclear.
Okay, I’ll admit that the XPS 9.9mm thickness for a laptop sounds (and looks) amazing – it can even put most smartphones to shame. But the price is just too hard to swallow. The Dell Vostro V13 on the other hand is actually reasonably priced… though it’s only available in Singapore right now. Which isn’t a big deal, considering it’s not quite official yet (though it’s up on the Dell Sinagpore website, specs and all).
First off, things are not quite as rosy – 16.5mm is just the thinnest part of the of the Vostro V13, at its thickest it’s 19.7 mm. But that still is only a hair thicker than the MacBook Air. Anyway, let’s see what we get for our money. The Dell Vostro V13 is a 13.3″ laptop with 1366 x 768 pixels resolution (the MacBook Air has 1280 x 800).
For the CPU you have a choice between Intel Core2 Duo SU7300 (1.3GHz, 3MB L2 cache), Intel Core2 Solo SU3500 (1.4GHz, 3MB L2 cache), Intel Celeron 743 (1.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache), all of them of the ultra-low voltage variety (the Adamo XPS has Intel Core2 Duo 1.4GHz ULV CPU).
A better look at the Dell Vostro V13
So far so good. The Dell Vostro V13 also sports goodies like up to 4GB DDR3 RAM 1066MHz, 802.11n support, gesture-controlled touchpad, 2 USB ports, one of which is a USB/eSATA combo, 34mm ExpressCard, 5-in-1 card reader, 1.3MP webcam.
For the OS, the choice ranges from anything from Ubuntu Linux, through Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional. The graphics are a bit disappointing – Intel GMA 4500MHD. The same holds for the storage memory – there is no SSD option. Not that you can put “SSD” and “cheap” in the same sentance. And obviously you don’t get an aluminum body or the touch-enabled latch that opens the Dell Adamo XPS.
Still, the Dell Vostro V13 price is only 450 US dollars, so the non-aluminum body doesn’t seem like such a loss. That price will probably be valid only for the Intel Celeron Ubuntu OS version. Since the Vostro V13 is still not announced properly, the price situation is a little unclear.
