Gadgetopia

High-speed chase ends when OnStar halts stolen SUV : Nice.  Or terrifying.  Not sure which.

[…] shortly after the suspect made a right turn, operators at […] OnStar service sent a command that electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to a halt.

[…] It was the first time since OnStar began offering the service in the 2009 model year that it was used to end a chase that could otherwise have had dire consequences.

Monopoly .com Edition : From 2000, complete with pictures.

In it the streets are replaced with ‘30 of today’s hottest web sites’. These are: Sportsline.com and FoxSports.com, Yahoo! Geocities, Oxygen and iVillage, shockwave.com, games.com and E! Online, Priceline, Expedia, and eBay, weather.com, about.com and cnet.com, ETrade, monster.com and MarketWatch.com, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista and Lycos, and Excite@Home and Yahoo!

Ringxiety: Good to know.

Ringxiety is a portmanteau neologism formed from the words “ringtone” and “anxiety.” […] Ringxiety is described as the sensation and the false belief that one can hear his or her mobile phone ringing or feel it vibrating, when in fact the telephone is not doing so.

HD DVD returns and kicks Blu-ray to the gutter:  Just when you thought the format war was over, Toshiba opened it up again in China, and they appear to be winning.

Just when Blu-ray thought it had clear sailing, a tempest has risen in the East: China Blue Hi-definition Disk (CBHD). Toshiba has licensed its HD DVD to them and it will be the unit world leader in HD optical technology in just 12 months.

Why? The Times Online reports that the CBHD players are outselling Blu-ray in China by 3-1 and the CBHD disks cost a quarter of Blu-ray.

Ford to use lasers instead of spark plugs to ignite and burn fuel: Is there anything cooler than frickin’ lasers?  Especially in my engine.

Ford and scientists at Liverpool University are currently testing a newly developed technology where lasers and being used to ignite fuel within the combustion chambers rather than spark plugs. The new technology is supposed to offer more benefits than what we currently have available. With laser technology, it can be focused and directed to multiple points in the piston chamber to ignite many sources of fuel. Also, it is much more stable than spark plug technology, making it easier so crank up a car in cold and damp conditions. Because of the stability achieved, they also say that is uses a lot less gasoline to ignite the fuel, which will save money in the short and long term.

The Real Genius Of The Kindle? The Return Of ‘Unitasking’: This guy echos sentiments I’ve made in the past:

Over a few weeks, I rediscovered my ability to simply read the book or article I had punched up in the first place. (Just like—gasp!—old-fashioned printed matter.) It’s particularly enjoyable when reading a newspaper or magazine—enough so that I’ve been routinely purchasing some of these publications when I could have grabbed my laptop and read them for free on the web. In effect, I’m paying for the lack of distraction.

See these earlier posts for the same general message – it’s easier to read when nothing else is fighting for your attention.

• The Printed Blog and the Difference Between Exploration and Consumption
• Reading Print Publications Electronically (my thought on the general concept is towards the end)

My Weekend with the Electric Mini Cooper (Mini-e): Nice little review of the all-electric Mini.  These things are gonna be fun.

Let’s start with the fun stuff. I shouldn’t be surprised, I’ve read about the Tesla, but this thing moves. It isn’t so much its 0-60 (officially 8.6 seconds) or its top speed (officially 95 mph), but that no matter how fast you’re going on any hill, if you give it gas, it instantly accelerates.

I think another thing that makes it seem fast is that the engine sounds that you’re used to hearing when you floor a car aren’t there. My brain expects that typical straining sound of an internal combustion engine when I press the pedal to the floor, but you don’t get that with the Mini-e… just speed. There is a little electric engine ‘whine’, but that certainly isn’t the same thing.

University requires students to buy an iPhone or similar device: Apple continues to spread its evil influence.

Now the oldest U.S. journalism school is asking students to buy those or similar devices to download classroom lectures or confirm facts on the Web while reporting from the scene of a plane crash or town council meeting.

The new rule for incoming freshmen at the University of Missouri School of Journalism appears to mark the first time an American university is requiring specific portable electronic devices. The policy has spurred a debate about the limits and possibilities of technology as well as corporate influence in academia.

Thank goodness some righteous, peace-loving, upstanding citizens stood up against this atrocity:

After […] complaints, the school clarified that it is requiring any Web-enabled, audio-video player like the iPhone or the iPod Touch, which is like an iPhone without the phone. So portable devices such as a Microsoft Zune or smart phones such as BlackBerrys can be acceptable. Just not preferred.

Apple may be forced into Verizon iPhone within two years: Looks like the AT&T-only strategy isn’t going to pan out for Apple. Future growth in the mobile market will be slow, and they’re already saturating AT&T — all their customers that want an iPhone have likely bought one, which means Apple needs to expand the pool of potential customers.

The hard ceiling on expansion, in turn, means Apple can’t afford to leave money on the table by artificially limiting who can buy an iPhone in the US. Instead of selling to just a fraction of AT&T’s 78.2 million customers, Apple is predicted to have access to as many as 150 million customers across Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile if it chooses not to renew its exclusivity contract. Estimates have Apple’s likely actual customer base nearly doubling from 17 million to 30 million users. The Cupertino company would have to accept a hit to its jealously-protected high profit margins but could well generate more revenue in addition to expanding its market share.

Antipodes Map - Antipodal location for any map point: I love this. It’s two Google Maps interfaces. Point the top one to your current location and the bottom one will reorient to your “antipodal” location, which is your exact opposite location. So, if you were to tunnel through the Earth from your current spot, your antipodal location is where you would pop out.

From Sioux Falls, I’d come up smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

‘Star Trek’ Fans Put Kirk’s Command Chair in Their Homes: This is the new hotness for Star Trek fans.

[…] lately fans like Mr. Veazie have been building or buying more sophisticated versions of the command module from which James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, ordered “Ahead, warp factor six.” Moreover, they are making them the centerpiece of their homes, thus conquering what is for them a final frontier of domestic decor.

[…] Drawing on a wide variety of new sources, including construction-oriented Web sites, Web-based entrepreneurs who supply kits of parts, and a Maryland company that just started selling ready-made chairs for $2,700 a piece, they are making a definitive statement to the world, or at least to their friends and families.

Winged luxury submarines ‘fly’ underwater: I’d love to play in one of these.

“There are no valves, there are no gauges,” Hawkes said. “You just power up the thrusters, start your take-off run, put the joystick forward, then the nose goes down. The wings literally pull it down.”

That’s very different from conventional submarines, which basically dive by changing the ballast of the ship to make it sink.

“It’s not just that they look like airplanes, they actually are,” Hawkes said. “The machines we build underwater should look like airplanes, not submarines. Airplanes don’t look like balloons.”

So, to go down, you essentially have to have power. Hopefully they’re buoyant, so they’d float up to the top without power.

Anatomy of a crash: This is an incredible analysis of a crash involving an Australian Ford Falcon XT.

0 milliseconds - An external object touches the driver’s door.
1 ms - The car’s door pressure sensor detects a pressure wave.
2 ms - An acceleration sensor in the C-pillar behind the rear door also detects a crash event.
2.5 ms - A sensor in the car’s centre detects crash vibrations.
5 ms - Car’s crash computer checks for insignificant crash events, such as a shopping trolley impact or incidental contact. It is still working out the severity of the crash. Door intrusion structure begins to absorb energy.

It’s incredible how much processing the car does in such a short period of time. By 70ms, the air bag is already starting to deflate, and, so far as the car is concerned, the crash is considered “complete.”

Here’s the real kicker:

150-300 ms - Occupant becomes aware of collision.

Airbus A380: Holy cats.

In November 2007, Airbus top sales executive and COO John Leahy confirmed plans for an enlarged variant, the A380-900, which would be slightly longer than the A380-800 […] This version would have a seating capacity of 650 passengers in standard configuration, and around 900 passengers in economy-only configuration.

1234567890 Day: Awesome.

It’s time to party like it’s 1234567890 – ‘cause it is! On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST), Unix time will equal ‘1234567890’.