Chill Sector

Intel might be slow on USB 3.0, but Asus ain’t. The Xtreme Design P7P55D-E is apparently the very first USB 3.0 motherboard. It’s an Intel P55-based mobo that uses a third-party USB 3.0 controller for a pair of ports.

It has 10 USB 2.0 orifices too. Personally, I’d just wait for a full USB 3.0 board, where every port’s USB 3.0. Otherwise, you’re just gonna feel cramped and then dumb, when you have to buy another board. If you must have the 3.0 now this slab supports CrossFire and SLI with a pair of PCIe x 16 slots, a pair of Gigabit ethernet ports, and eSATA. Of course, there’s no price or date for this thing yet, which makes it a little less exciting, perhaps. As exciting as gimped USB 3.0 motherboards can get, anyway.

Asus, Intel, Motherboards, usb, usb 3.0

In this week’s incidentally infringing app roundup: NASA enters the iPhone’s orbit, Earthworm Jim is ALIVE, your handset learns two tricks it should’ve known already, rhythm gaming goes pro, and Loopt users crudely proposition one another.

The Best

NASA: NASA’s really stepped up their online presence in the last few years, giving armchair astronauts more media, stats and news than they could ever want. Nasa’s iPhone app, matter-of-factly named “NASA app for iPhone,” aggregates it all, including Twitter feeds, orbit trackers, images, video and mission updates. Free, unless you count income tax.

GameCenter: A free encyclopedia of games, GameCental taps into GameFly’s massive database of titles to immediately spit out everything from release dates to platform availability to screenshots to reviews. It’s a field guide for games, essentially—a type of tool which lends itself well to the iPhone.

Pet Semetary: A gored-up mobile take on Stephen King’s eponymous book and film, Pet Sematary is proudly straightforward: You shoot zombies; the zombies are often cats. It’s a slow-build game, with short stages that get progressively harder, and accordingly, it’s great timekiller. A dollar.

Wolfram Alpha: For this week’s obnoxiously contrarian pick, how about a calculator app that costs $50, and doesn’t do a whole lot more than the web-based version, available for free through the iPhone’s browser? Yes, perfect. I don’t totally buy that whole “graphing calculators are $100, this app is just $50″ reasoning, but the mathematical shortcut keyboard as well as a streamlined interface are pretty great. In other words, if (and only if) you can somehow expense something like this—ie, you work at CERN—totally do it.

ReelDirector: This is as close as you’re going to get to iMovie on your iPhone (which is still not very close, at all). Video stitching alone, though, will be worth the ($8) price of entry for many people, at least until Apple builds it into their camera app.

Rock Band: Despite the obvious success of games like Tap Tap Revolution, the big rhythm game players have generally steered clear of the App Store. Until this week! Rock Band, late as it is, is pretty good, with caveats: the control scheme isn’t ideal; the singing mode isn’t actually a singing mode; and it could stand to include a few more than the base 20 songs. Which are licensed, popular songs, by the way—not lame mashups or no-name material like you see in some other rhythm apps. $10.

SongSift: It’s easy to let your iPhone library get cluttered with odd singles, poorly-tagged strays, and one-off playlist refugees. The real solution is to sort your freakin’ colllection, you slob, but until you do, SongSift lets you filter albums by length, so if you’re setting out on a run, or want to set-and-leave your iPhone for a while, you’ll be able to find large, contiguous chunks of music with a simple slider. A dollar.

NFB: Canada’s National Film Board funds all kinds of interesting films, documentaries and miscellaneous video projects, which their new iPhone app offers up for free. It’s hard to argue with that, so I won’t.

Earthworm Jim: The iPhone-ified Earthworm Jim could be a little cheaper, and the controls could be a bit more refined. But really, it’s hard to imagine a more authentic port for this game, especially to a platform without buttons.

Loopt Mix: Loopt doesn’t just keep track of friends now, it finds new ones. With the “Mix” feature, you can send any nearby Loopt users a friend request. And from the looks of the promotional shots, you’re supposed to parlay that request into an entirely different kind of request, which we’ll talk about after the kids go to bed.

Honorable Mentions

The Colbert Report’s The Word: To be fair, The Word is a highlight of every episode of the Colbert Report. It just seems like, you know, you’ve made this nice video app an all, so why not throw in rest of the otherwise free ColbertNation.com content as well? Oh well. A dollar.

SuicideGirls: A video choose-your-own-adventure story in which one of the possible ending is engaging in light petting with an angry, tattooed, seminude lady. Remember when Apple used to ban dictionary apps for swearing?

Gucci: A free promotional tool for a company I have a feeling our readers aren’t all that in to, Gucci’s iPhone app actually has some neat features, including a in-app DJ tool, local restaurant/bar/whatever recommendations, and, uh, some stuff about clothes, or bags, or something.

Apple, Apps, Software, The week's 10 best iphone apps, Top, iPhone, iPhone Apps, the week in iPhone apps

Talk about sweet!  I never thought of fish being worthwhile pets but I’d maybe think differently if I saw them all domesticated in one of these designer tanks.  At a stupid ass price of $6,500,  I can only imagine the “trustafarian” who displays this in their loft. It also looks like this thing is a real bitch to keep clean as the compartments are all narrow and tight, with some even being far away.  I know my tune changed pretty quick on this product, but with a price tag like that I’m just stupefied.

Aquarium, Chamber, Household, Rooms, Tank, expensive, fish, rich

If you’ve got any kind of interest in e-readers, then you know they can be a bit pricey.  But the jetBook-Lite from ECTACO is looking to change all that by selling for $149.95. The jetBook-Lite is officially, as of this writing, the cheapest e-reader device on the market. Now, when you get a low-cost device like this, naturally you give up a few things.  Tops on the list is 3G wireless connectivity and color secondary screens. However, what you DO get is support for pretty much any ebook format on the face of the earth, including eReader DRM from Barnes and Noble.  Plus, you also get support for multiple languages and a built-in dictionary, a rotating screen that can handle portrait or landscape mode, and last but not least, and incredible twenty three hours of run time on the strength of four AA batteries. It’s a pretty good value for a cheap e-reader.

3G wireless, Computers, Discounts, Displays, ECTACO, Portable, bargain, discount, e reader, inexpensive, jetBook Lite, travel

If you’ve been eyeing the downloadable student edition upgrade of Windows 7 with that sweet, sweet $29 price, you might want to hold off. Microsoft has acknowledged that downloads from Digital River, the provider of student edition upgrades, are experiencing problems.

Apparently Microsoft decided to release the upgrade as an installer instead of an ISO file, and it’s causing all kinds of headaches. Users are reporting that after the installer goes through the “Unloading the BOx” step, an error occurs and the installation fails.

There are workarounds available, like instructions to build your own ISO out of the installer, but it’s probably best to wait a bit until this is all sorted out.

Bugs, Microsoft, Windows 7 student edition, windows 7

The real key is using the limits of the iPhone 3GS’s camera as a strength, Japanese pro photographer Koichi Mitsui: Its “simplicity keeps me devoted to only composition and the perfect photo opp.”

In other words, the secret is composition, composition, composition. The one real advantage the iPhone 3GS has in this regard against past iPhones is that you can change the focal point, which lets you alter the shot in subtle ways, which is one of his tips. Also, he suggests trying some different camera apps—he likes Photo fx and CameraKit, though I’m partial to CameraBag.

Here’s a couple of other awesome photos he’s taken, but you can see way more at his photo blog, which gives you a view of Japan that maybe you haven’t seen.

Cameras, Digital Cameras, Photography, Photos, iPhone, iphone 3gs, japan

In case you’re wondering how much the Droid’s car mount and fancy dock cost, they’re $30 a piece.

Cellphones, Motorola, Motorola Droid, Smartphones, droid, verizon

Unfortunately, the only group of people that will be able to purchase the Lenovo Ideapad U150 are those who live in Japan.  The Lenovo Ideapad U150 is a great laptop for individuals that want lots of portability.  The laptop weighs in at only 3.3 pounds and is 1.35 inches thick.  In addition to portability, the company is also claiming the Lenovo Ideapad U150 can get up to 7 hours of battery life on its 6-cell battery. The screen for the Lenovo Ideapad U150 is a mere 11.1 inches and has a dual core SU4100 CULV processor.  The processor on the computer leaves savvy consumers wondering if the Lenovo Ideapad U150 will be marketed as a notebook or a netbook. The Lenovo Ideapad U150 does run on a Windows 7 operating system.  Some of the other features of the Lenovo Ideapad U150 include a 1.3-megapixel camera, WiFi and Bluetooth, multi-touch trackpad, and GMA 4500M HD graphics.  Although most of the features of the Lenovo Ideapad U150 are not that exceptional, the laptop stands out with its style.  The Lenovo Ideapad U150 has a worn-leather look that differentiates it from other laptops.

Gadgets, General Gadgets, Laptops, Lenovo Ideapad U150, lenovo, netbook, notebook, tech gadgets

PC Pro looked into the bloatware included on new laptops by major manufacturers, measuring how memory, HDD space and boot times are negatively effected. And good lord, it’s worse than you thought.

Bloatware, the crap software that manufacturers pre-install on their computers that include demos, media software and other junk you never use, is infuriating. And seeing the numbers, it’s even more insane that these companies are crippling their own products with this junk. Here’s how the worst offenders break down, compared to clean installs on the same machines:

Acer: 2:01 longer boot time, 952MB larger memory footprint, 2.4GB less HDD space
HP: 1:35 longer boot time, 1.06GB larger memory footprint, 2.18GB less HDD space
Dell: 0:52 longer boot time, 1.18GB larger memory footprint, 3GB less HDD space
Sony: 1:54 longer boot time, 1.11GB larger memory footprint, 1.3GB less HDD space

Acer, Bloatware, Crapware, Dell, Laptops, Software, hp, sony

Here’s the pitch: a 10-inch, almost-pocketable computer running Snow Leopard, the latest, greatest version of OS X. It costs just $300. Sound good? Here’s how to make your own.

Why You Should Do This

Last time we threw together a guide like this, things were different. Snow Leopard was but a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye, and in terms of hardware, the Mini 9 was the best thing going—it was pretty much the only netbook you could guarantee would work perfectly. Not to mention the hackintosh process was much, much more complicated. And riskier! And yet, despite all this, it was easy to recommend loading a Mini up with OS X, because to put it bluntly, the results were fantastic.

But the Mini 9 was a bit too small for regular use, and even if it’s still pretty easy to buy one, it’s not officially part of Dell’s product line anymore. Fast forward to now: the Mini 10v is a (quite similar) replacement for the 9, with a slightly larger screen, 160GB HDD standard, and 1GB or RAM. Most importantly, the keyboard is a bit larger, and the price is wonderfully low: $300 for a netbook that’s completely ready for hackintoshing. Or to put it another way, the 10v is a $300 Apple netbook.

And it isn’t just the hardware that’s changed, it’s the software. Snow Leopard is fast—faster than 10.5—and its new interface features, like Dock Expose, make using OS X on a netbook even easier. Finder is faster, Quicktime has a new interface. It’s a pretty big upgrade from Leopard, is what I’m trying to say.

And installation tools have grown up too. Netbook hackintoshing used to be an all-day process, with external optical drives, Terminal commands, and numerous terrifying driver tweaks. Today, there are simple software utilities to take care of all this for you. So let’s recap: Since 2008, the hardware has gotten cheaper and better, OS X more mature, and the installation process much simpler. Oh yeah, and Snow Leopard retail costs $30. (Though strict moralists should note that this is intended to be an upgrade.) There’s never been a better time to hackintosh—not by a long shot.

That said, one thing hasn’t changed. TERMINAL > SUDO REWRITE DISCLAIMER:

Even though we’re using a standard retail-purchased copy of OS X, the disclaimer: Apple does not like this. It violates the OS X EULA, and probably won’t make the Dell folks too happy either, should you need to return your hacked Mini 9 for service. So, as always, proceed at your own risk.

And of course, this tutorial messes with some pretty core components of your netbook, which means there’s a real, if small, risk of brickage. Proceed at your own risk, again. Anyway.

What You’ll Need

• Dell Mini v2. The stock version, at $300, works perfectly.

• BIOS version lower than A06 (A05, A04, A03 all work fine)

Downgrade instructions are available here, though they require a Windows PC for creating a bootable DOS flash drive. There are a lot of scary acronyms here, but don’t worry—it’s no more than a few minutes of work.

• Retail copy of OS X 10.6 (NOT an OEM copy that comes with a new Mac). An ISO will do fine here too, but discs are just $30, you cheapskate. Upgrades to 10.6.1 should be applied after the fact.

• An 8GB (or larger) USB flash drive, the faster the better. External HDDs will work too.

• A Mac with a working optical drive, for preparing your flash drive

• Netbook BootMaker (a free Mac application)

Preparing Your Flash Drive

The 10v doesn’t have an optical drive, and it’s a pain in the ass to have to go find one, burn a new disc, and do things the old-fashioned way. Installing from a USB flash drive is much, much easier. So that’s the method we’ll be running with.

1. Insert your flash drive and OS X Retail install disk into your computer

2. Open Disk Utility (searching in Spotlight is the easiest way to find this)

3. Select your flash drive from the list on the left. Make sure to select the drive itself, not any partitions you may have written to it before.

4. In the right panel, select the “Partition” screen.

5. From the dropdown menu, select “1 Partition,” then click “Options” below the partition map.

6. Select “Master Boot Record.” This will ensure that your Mini 10v can boot from your flash drive. Select a name for your partition—doesn’t really matter what—and apply your changes. Keep in mind this will delete anything you have on your flash drive right now, so back it up if need be.

7. Once this is done, move from the “Partition” screen to the “Restore” screen in Disk Utility

8. For your Restore Source, select (by dragging) the OS X install disk from the left panel. Make sure this is the item called something to the effect of “Mac OS Install DVD,” not “Optiarc DVD” or some other hardware title. For the destination, drag your newly-prepared partition over. Click restore.

This will take at least an hour, so go have sandwich or something. Or even better, skip ahead make sure your Mini 10v is ready for the install, as outlined in the next section.

Ok, once that slog is done, it’s time to let Netbook BootMaker do its magic. And let me be clear: it is magic. What this utility will do is install a special bootloader on your flash drive, which allows your netbook to begin an OS X install. It also throws in a few driver tweaks, to make sure your 10v, y’know, work.

9. Running BootMaker is easy—just open the app, select your OS X partition on your newly-minted flash drive, and tell it to GO GO GO.

Aaaaand that’s it! You’re ready to start hackintoshing.

Installing OS X

First, you’re going to need to do some light prep on your 10v.

10. Jump into the BIOS, since we’re going to need to check on a few things. You can do this by restarting the 10v, and hitting F2 as the Dell logo first shows up.

11. Double-check to see if you have the right BIOS. As long as it’s lower than A06, you’re fine. If not, refer back to the “What You’ll Need” section.

12. With the arrow keys, cycle over to the “Advanced” screen, where you’ll see a list of options. USB BIOS Legacy support should be enabled, as should Bluetooth.

13. Now cycle over to the Boot screen. This is where you tell your 10v which drive to start from. During normal use, this will the hard drive where your OS is installed. Since we’re installing an OS today, though, you’re going to want to select “USB Storage,” and move it to the top by pressing the F6 key.

14. Once you’re done, press F10 to save and exit. If you’re ready to dive straight into the install, make sure you have your prepped USB drive plugged in and ready to go.

15. Plug your computer in, if it’s not already. You don’t want your netbook to die halfway though—this will only lead to sadness.

Next time you boot with your flash drive plugged in, you should see this screen. Don’t be alarmed by the spinning pinwheel; just leave it for a few minutes. Your computer is thinking.

16. HAHA, BEHOLD! This screen here, it’s awfully Apple-y! But you’re not done yet. Let the install complete, following the regular prompts as you go. When it asks you where to install OS X, select and clear the entire HDD of your device. This will delete everything, so make sure you have your stuff backed up.

After about an hour, you’re done. Seriously—that’s it. Your first boot will take longer than normal, and your desktop may freeze for minutes at a time. Give it some time to figure everything out. Within about 10 minutes, your desktop should be ready to go.

Odds and Ends

By and large, your install should work out of the box. Sleep, shutdown/startup, sound, keyboard shortcuts, battery indicators, and anything else you can think of should be present and at attention, barring one glaring flaw: the trackpad. It’s kinda shitty, and makes dragging-and-dropping nearly impossible. Here’s what you need to do:

17. Go here, and download the attached trackpad driver.

18. Open Finder on your 10v, and press CMD+Shift+G (on this keyboard, that’s Alt+Shift+G.) In the box that comes up, typed “/Extra” and press enter.
This will bring you to a hidden folder. Copy the .kext file you’ve download into the Mini10vExt folder, making sure to back up the one you’re replacing.
19. Run the app in the “Extra” directory called UpdateExtra, which will alert OS X to the new drivers. Restart your computer.

Now you should be able to click and drag—the cursor should jump when your second finger makes contact. You should see, as you could before, a panel in the OS X preferences where you can adjust trackpad settings. Play with them as you like—two finger scrolling is great, and makes the 10v feel more like a genuine Apple netbook.

The only other issue you’re likely to run into is the occasional too-tall settings screen. Here’s an obscenely clever virtual screen resolution workaround for that.

So There You Go

You’ve got yourself a fully-functioning, beautifully small Snow Leopard netbook, which’ll do 90% of what a 13-inch MacBook can, at 70% the size and about 25% of the cost. Mine’s close to perfect: With an extended battery, I’m pushing 7 hours of battery life with Wi-Fi, which makes my MacBook pro look like a LOSER. And tiny extra bit of size over the Mini 9 means the keyboard is just large enough to work on, meaning this thing isn’t just a toy—it’s a decent investment. This from a guy with banana fingers.

Performance is acceptable, meaning you can run regular apps like iTunes, Firefox—and even Photoshop in a bind. It’s not noticeably slow during normal use, though it’ll choke on higher-res Flash video (no YouTube HD, but SD works fine). As with any notebook, this pretty much can’t be your main machine. But it’s a brilliant extra portable machine, for toilet browsing, travel, class notes and the like.

Anyway, buckets of thanks to the DellMyMini forums, especially users MechDrew and Bmcclure937. Without their guides, I wouldn’t have been able to write this one. And of course, a hat tip to Adam Pash, who was already elbow-deep in Snow Leopard hackintoshing when we were all still too afraid. See his fantastic guide to building the build your own desktop hackintosh here.

10v, Dell Mini 10, Dell mini 10v, Dell mini 10v hackintosh, Guides, Hackintosh, How To, Snow leopard, Snow leopard hackintosh, Top

When I first fired up the page for the Sanicare Travel Bidet/Portable Bidet, I wasn’t reading ‘bidet’ correctly, that is until I got to the description.  Yup, I’m afraid to say that this little sucker is for washing your nonmentionables, and I don’t mean your underwear.  Perhaps it’s my US up bringing, but I found this little gadget to be disturbing on so many levels.  Check some of the marketing text:

• The EXTERNAL SPRAY HEAD is intended for external washing of genital and anal areas.
• The INTERNAL SPRAY HEAD is intended for internal feminine washing or douching.
• The NURSING SPRAY HEAD is intended for general washing of body parts of infants and patients all-at-bed.

Even better is the chick pictured drying her hair with an almost ear to ear grin.  If you so dare you can grab one for $40.

Portable, Wacky, gross, travel, travel bidet, washing

Sure, Windows 7 Media Center is included with the OS, but if you can’t give up your TiVo interface, here’s a cheap way to roll your own, HTPC style—$60 for Nero Liquid TV software and a tuner card.

Crave posted a pretty good dool for a $70 price, a far cry from the $199 retail and $132 it runs on amazon. But a quick Froogle search turned up the same package at Fry’s for $60. Considering you’re getting the exact same software standalone TiVo boxes use and a USB TV tuner that can decode ATSC and QAM, that ain’t a bad deal at all.

Keep in mind you will have to pay $100 bucks a year for TiVo service, the one thing about TiVo that I never liked.

Also, the tuner can only accept clear QAM, ATSC and NTSC signals, so no premium cable. Hopefully now that Windows 7 Supports CableCard so well, you’ll be able to expand your channel selection soon.

Dealzmodo, Liquid TV, Media Center, Nero liquid tv, TiVo, Windows 7 media center, nero

We already knew that they loved the build quality, but in this in-depth review we found out more about the Droid’s functionality and performance. BGR felt the Droid “sounded great as a phone” and that it made calls quickly and smoothly. It also works great with Google Voice—natch. They continued to rave about the large capacitive screen calling it “crisp, sharp, vibrant, bright, and really, really responsive.” No problems with the batter life either—it was deemed the best of any Android device they ever tested. Officially, it is supposed to get 6.5 hours of continual usage and around 270 hours of standby. These figures weren’t confirmed, but they did say that they could easily get a day’s worth of usage (with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled). Definitely impressive for a user-replaceable battery.

As far as the keyboard is concerned, BGR found some flaws: the feedback was lacking, keys were a bit too close together and the directional pad can be wonky at times. However, they were pleased with its performance overall. What’s most interesting about this is that they used the opportunity to drop a little nugget about the possibility of Motorola building a keyboard-less version. To this end they definitively stated “they are.”

Again, this unit isn’t final so it is conceivable that the Droid could get even better before launch. Either way, it seems like Motorola and Android might have a winner on their hands. Check out BGR for the full review

Android, Cellphones, Google, Motorola Droid, Preview, Smartphones, droid, verizon

In this age, people normally use a cell phone to track their child.  Although this is sometimes a savvy decision, some parents are finding that their child is either losing their mobile phone or abusing the phone.  The Ekahau T301W wristband uses a Wi-Fi technology to pinpoint a child’s location information to a parent.  The Ekahau T301W wristband is small and waterproof which makes it even more attractive. The Ekahau T301W wristband is not a GPS system, although it is similar.  With a GPS system, it is possible to get off of the grid and become undetectable.  The Ekahau T301W wristband was created so that parents could track their child from anywhere and the device works in places where there is no GPS coverage.  Consumers can expect to pay around $60 for the Ekahau T301W wristband. Although the device would make a great buy for errant children, the designers of the Ekahua also had business owners in mind when they created the wristband.  Business owners can use the Ekahau T301W wristband to track their visitors while they are on the premises.  It may also be a good buy for rescue workers, underground workers, and even soldiers.  The accuracy of location embedded in the Ekahau T301W wristband allows the users of the band to get tracked within a few feet of their location.  The battery on the device can last either a few weeks or a month depending on how often it is used.

Ekahau, Ekahau T301W, Ekahau Wristband, Gadgets, tech gadgets

While I’ll reserve my judement on sound quality until I get my hands on one of what Vestalife calls their ‘iconic’ speakers system, their latest line of bug inspired speaker systems do posses an attractive facade that will get most performing a head turn.

The Ladybug II is an upgrade version of their first Ladybug and adds better electronics, stronger bass and a ported subwoofer. 

Bugs, Speakers, iPhone, iPod, iphones, vestalife