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Review: YouTube-Ready Video Camera Gets the Goods

Posted: November 1st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jackson Lynch

Tags: [edit]

Kodak takes another stab at video with the Zi6. It's YouTube-ready, handles still shots nicely and USB plug delivers instant upload and edit.

Gallery: Homemade Motorized Bike Pays Tribute to Motorcycles of Yesteryear

Posted: November 1st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Chuck Squatriglia

James Hough is a lawyer by profession but a gearhead at heart. He’s always tinkering with engines and building things from scratch. About a year ago, he combined the two passions to create the Houghmade Cycle Works 71, a motorized bicycle that pays homage to the racing motorcycles of the early 20th century.

"I had been looking for a project and saw online that someone had put an engine on an old Schwinn," Hough says. "I was inspired by that and thought it would be a fun project, an outlet for my desire to build. I thought it would be fun to ride around the neighborhood and to run errands. The 100-plus mpg didn't hurt."

Click through the gallery to check out the tech behind this cruiser on steroids.

Left:

Hough drew inspiration from the board-track racers that sped around steeply banked wood tracks called motordromes — especially the 1911 Harley Davidson "Silent Grey Fellow" and the leaf-sprung Indian motorcycles of that era. The Houghmade bike's gas tank copies the tank found on the 1919 Excelsior OHC that some consider the most advanced motorcycle of its day.

: Photo: James Hough

Like most projects, the Houghmade Cycle Works 71 took longer and cost more than expected. "I started in August of 2007 and expected it to be done in a month," Hough says. "However, as time went on, my vision of what I wanted became clearer. I wanted something special."

Hough spent 13 months and "somewhere around $1,000, give or take," on the project. Future plans include better brakes — drum brakes from a moped or disc brakes from a mountain bike — and perhaps a chain guard. "I do not see it as a safety issue, because my cuffs are nowhere near the drive chain," Hough says. "I purposefully left the chain guard off both sides because board-track racers did not have chain guards."

: Photo: James Hough

Hough modified or made many of the parts on the bike. The handlebars were formed from old plumbing pipe, and the headlight is a railroad lantern. He's fitted it with a speedometer and electric lamp that uses a 3-volt flashlight bulb and two batteries. "I will probably install a more robust lighting system inside the current headlight housing, though I have no intention to ride at night," he says.

: Photo: James Hough

Hough sweats the details, going so far as to install a manual oil pump and fabricate an air-filter housing similar to those the board-track racers used. Houghmade Cycle Works is a play on words, and the model number he assigned the bike — 71 — refers to the year he was born.

: Photo: James Hough

Though the final product looks seamless, underneath it's a Frankenstein of disparate bike parts.

The project all started with a Huffy "Santa Fe" beach cruiser Hough found at a flea market for $25. The only things left from that old clunker are the frame, stem and seat post.

The Husky wheels sport white Kenda tires. Pedals from a Free Spirit that Hough road in junior high turn a crank set taken from a kid's bike of unknown origin. The springer fork is from an old Schwinn.

: Photo: James Hough

The seat is an "eBay special" Hough re-covered it with goatskin. The front and rear leaf springs are ornamental and don't actually provide any suspension damping, but the style is spot-on.

: Photo: James Hough

But how fast is it? Although the speedo maxes out at 50 mph, Hough says the Houghmade Cycle Works 71 won't go that fast. "It runs smooth," he says. "I cruise around at 25 to 30 mph. It tops out around 40, but that's really pushing it. At 25 to 30 mph, it really feels like highway speeds, and I love every minute of it."

: Photo: James Hough

The bike sports a half-gallon fuel tank bonded to a fiberglass shell that replicates the shape of the fuel tank on a 1919 Excelsior OHC. It's enough to go about 50 miles. Hough is toying with the idea of fabricating a tank out of sheet metal. "This project has done wonders for many of my DIY skills," he says, "Why not more sheet metal skills?"

: Photo: James Hough

The heart of the bike is a Honda GHX50 50cc engine mated to a Grubee Skyhawk II transmission. Hough spent a little more than $400 for the drivetrain, which is mounted to the Huffy frame with a Grubee engine mount. The bike is street-legal in Indiana and doesn't require a license plate or registration. "I have ridden it to work," he says, adding that it's a 32-mile round trip. "I stick to back roads and try to do my riding away from traffic. I try to ride two or three times a week for fun."

Bicyclists Show Off Their Two-Wheeling Tattoos

Posted: November 1st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by James Merithew

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Some hard-core bicyclists sport enough ink to give the Hells Angels a run for their money in the tattoo department.

From stark, black-and-white symbols to colorful skin-art standbys like flaming skulls and comic-book characters, you never know what will show up on the arms and pedal-pumping legs of bike fanatics.

Left:

Sean McKinney, of S&M Bikes, has the company logo tattooed on his wrist. He had the skulls added to the logo for effect.

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The number for "4130 Chromoly," a steel alloy containing chromium and molybdenum that is commonly used in bike frames, is tattooed on the right shin of Dave Harris, 34, of Binghamton, New York.

"It is my metal of choice," said Harris, who is a welder for FBM Bike.

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Matt "The Beard" Bischoff, owner of Cincinnati's Failure Bikes, has a tattoo inspired by bike rider Tim "Fuzzy" Hall on his inner bicep.

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A lost bet led to the tattoo on the thigh of Zack "Catfish" Yankush, of Dayton, Ohio. The artwork shows fellow BMX rider Alan Cook doing a back flip over his wife.

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Brian Osborne, 31, of Louisville, Kentucky, has sprockets tattooed on his right arm. "BMX," said Osborne. "What more can I say?"

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The Silver Surfer rides a Schwinn Black Phantom on the forearm of Jason Faircloth, 35, of Marin County, California.

"My buddy had a really cool Silver Surfer tattoo, but it seemed kinda poseur for me to get," said Faircloth, who works as a product manager for Marin Bikes. "I'm not a surfer. I'm a biker."

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Brad Cider, 30, of Thousand Oaks, California, has a tribute to his riding partner NJJ tattooed on his chest. Cider is a sales rep for Pronghorn Racing.

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World Bicycle Trials champion Vittorio Brumotti has a tattoo commemorating his favorite rider on his chest.

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A bicycle tire bursts out of a flaming, winged skull on the thigh of Denver resident East Foster, 39.

"I didn't have anything to do with it," said Foster. "I gave a friend free rein and this is what he came up with. I think it is perfect."

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Ryan Sher, 28, of Portland, Oregon, is brand manager for Subrosa Bicycles. He has the skull-and-snake emblem from the company's Malum bicycle tattooed on his forearm.

While he makes the designs for the bicycles, they don't all end up as tattoos on his body.

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Michael Sean Moore of Santa Cruz, California, and an employee of bike shop Calfee Design, has the word bicycle tattooed on his forearm.

"So simple," said Moore.

Video: Wingsuit Cliff-Jumpers Take Off

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 7:35pm EDT by Noah Shachtman

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This is either the stupidest or the coolest thing someone could ever do. Or possibly a combination of both. Watch Wingsuit cliff-jumpers take off!

New York Coder Charged With Helping TJ Maxx Hacker

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 7:33pm EDT by Kevin Poulsen

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The 25-year-old is charged with conspiracy after allegedly producing a packet sniffer customized to steal credit and debit card numbers.

Bogus Robocall Tells Floridians They Can Vote By Phone

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 6:37pm EDT by Sarah Lai Stirland

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The residents of Broward County, Florida, have recently received misleading robocalls telling them that they can vote by phone on Election Day, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Friday. This call is one of several dirty tricks being pulled off in the last days of the 2008 election.

How to Descend a Mountain on a Bike

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 5:45pm EDT by Adrienne So

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There's nothing like whipping down the side of a mountain on two wheels, and it's an especially pleasant reward after the hard-fought climb to the top. But it's a feat as dangerous as it is fun. Here are our tips for keeping the rubber side down — and keeping out of the ER. Got extra advice? Edit our How-To Wiki and share your knowledge.

Miyamoto Struggles to Sell Inscrutable 'Wii Music'

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 5:44pm EDT by Chris Kohler

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Nintendo's new music game isn't the wildfire hit everybody expected. That's because it's nothing like Rock Band and Guitar Hero — and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Twitterers Stage Mock Martian Invasion a la 'War of the Worlds'

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 5:05pm EDT by Jenna Wortham

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A blitz of tiny messages document an extraterrestrial rampage in real time. Orson Welles would be so proud of the microblogging tricksters.

VCs Put the Brakes on Early-Stage Startups

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 3:44pm EDT by Betsy Schiffman

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Venture capitalists claim the money is still flowing in Silicon Valley, but entrepreneurs say it just ain't so. The only companies that are getting money right now are big, established businesses or startups founded by repeat entrepreneurs. In Silicon Valley, the so-called center of innovation, it now takes more than a good idea to raise a buck.

Drive if You Dare: The World's Scariest Cars

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 1:45pm EDT by Keith Barry

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Autopia salutes Halloween by presenting some of the most hideous cars ever to roll off an assembly line. Which one would you drive, if you could? Really? Tell us all about it, then.

Top 5 Scary Movies You (Probably) Haven't Seen

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 3:30am EDT by John Scott Lewinski

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Veer off the beaten path this Halloween for vintage horror flicks that will deliver fresh shocks (with YouTube clips to whet your appetite).

Extreme Resolution Photos and Lasers Create Virtual Yosemite

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:45am EDT by Alexis Madrigal

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Geologists use a 40-foot long, 96-GB photo mosaic of Yosemite with airborne laser mapping to learn what causes rock falls. Eventually they hope to predict where slides may occur.

Video: Stomach Stapling Without Surgery

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:12am EDT by Aaron Rowe

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A new stomach stapling technique involves sending a device through the mouth and esophagus into the stomach to seal off part of the stomach with titanium staples, avoiding surgery and some side effects.

Wired.com Readers' Best Geeky Halloween Costumes

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com Photo Department

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It can be scary soliciting photos from Wired.com readers and not knowing what to expect, let alone Halloween costume photos. Sure, some were creepy in all the wrong ways, but our favorite 10 submissions put our fears to rest.

Click through the gallery to see the best geeky costumes our readers have to offer, from Predator to iPod silhouette girl.

If your Halloween spirit is still not quenched, head over to our best reader pumpkin gallery.

Left:

Robotech Cyclone
Submitted by Chris Lee

Photographer's comment:

"All info here: http://www.chrislee.tv/costuming/anime/cyclone/"

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Predator
Submitted by M. Lawrence

Photographer's comment:

"Built over the past year, shown here at the Manitoba Comic Con."

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WWII Captain America
Submitted by MrCrumley

Photographer's comment:

"I made this sweet version of the Ultimate Captain America's WWII uniform for my 4-year-old. Enemies of freedom beware!"

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My Facebook Page
Submitted by Brandon Streng

Photographer's comment:

"This is a 36" by 52" printout of my actual Facebook page from the end of last week. I cut out the section where my profile picture would be so I could stick my head through."

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Mario Brothers and Peach
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach. The coins are REAL gold."

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TK-421
Submitted by Andrew Liptak

Photographer's comment:

"A classic, the Imperial Storm Trooper."

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iPod nerds
Submitted by Christy Kilgore-Hadley

Photographer's comment:

"I am dressed as an iPod commercial, my friends as a Nano and Steve Jobs. I had a lot of fun going to the liquor store like that, let me tell ya."

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"I aint gettin' on no plane, Hannibal."
Submitted by MrTheodore

Photographer's comment:

"I still get props for this costume."

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Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica
Submitted by Gabrielle

Photographer's comment:

"A friend painted the tattoos on with face paint, and I got my hair cut to look like Starbuck in her earlier years. It was for a work party, and everyone got a kick out of it!"

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Zombie Pet
Submitted by Tom Haines

Photographer's comment:

"A little goth girl with a pet zombie."

Pricey 21-Pixel DSLR Captures Beaucoup Data

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jackson Lynch

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This camera redefines the "mega" in megapixel, with a whopping 21.1. Add to that a superb user interface and Dual Digic III processors, and you've got one of our favorite high-end DSLRs.

Oct. 31, 1951: We'll Cross That Street When We Come to It

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Randy Alfred

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1951: The first official zebra crossing starts protecting pedestrians at Slough, just west of London.

Postwar Britain had only 10 percent of its current road traffic, but fatalities were mounting. The typical pedestrian crossing was marked with nothing more than metal studs in the road: easy for pedestrians to see, but difficult for the motorist. By the time a driver felt the bumps under his tires, it was usually too late to stop or slow down.

The government's Transport Research Laboratory ran visibility experiments on new types of crossings, using model roads at 1/24 scale (half-inch to the foot). The lab then tested a variety of designs at a thousand locations starting in 1949. Broad black and white stripes had the most visual impact.

The new, striped crossings were made the legal standard in Britain and widely introduced in late 1951, starting at Slough (The name rhymes with plow, not slow, and the borough is the putative location of the original BBC version of the TV comedy, The Office.)

Pedestrian deaths dropped 11 percent in the first year.

Jim Callaghan, Member of Parliament (and later prime minister), visited the lab in 1948 and is sometimes credited with first noting the crossing's resemblance to a zebra. Despite Callaghan's saying in 1951 that he didn't remember that, no one else has ever claimed credit, and the name zebra crossing caught on.

Enamored of the moniker, Britain's Ministry of Transport has called forth animal cognates for subsequent improvements. The panda crossing used interlocking black and white triangles instead of stripes. The pelican (pedestrian light controlled) crossing combined traffic lights and conventional, rectangular stripes. The puffin (pedestrian user-friendly intelligent) crossing uses sensors to detect pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The toucan (two can cross) is shared by pedestrians and bicycles. The pegasus is a pelican crossing with a control panel high enough for horse riders to push the button. It's a bleedin' roadside zoo.

Cities around the world have been gradually adopting the crosswalk of a different stripe. The old-fashioned two-stripe crosswalk (with just its borders marked by full-length stripes perpendicular to the direction of traffic) cannot be seen by motorists from farther than 100 feet or so away. At 30 mph, that's about 2 seconds.

Zebra-striped crosswalks can be seen from greater distances. An empty crosswalk informs drivers that pedestrians might enter there. And pedestrians who are crossing the street are highly visible as they move against the striped background. (You can improve your own visibility to distant vehicles by walking on the side of a zebra crosswalk nearest to the approaching traffic: That maximizes how much of your body appears against the stripes flickering behind you.)

The Beatles brought international fame to the zebra crossing in 1969 with the album cover for Abbey Road. The much-parodied image also inspired the current logo of Abbey Road Studios, where the album was recorded. Beatles producer Sir George Martin has a heraldic badge of a zebra carrying an abbot's crozier — along with a crest of a martin holding a recorder under its left wing, a Latin motto that could be translated as "Love is all you need," and a shield with three beetles. Go figure.

Source: Various

How Math Unraveled the 'Hard Day's Night' Mystery

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Eliot Van Buskirk

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A Canadian math professor solved a riddle that has haunted guitarists and musicologists for decades: how the Beatles played the opening chord of 'Hard Day's Night.' Evidently, the band got by with a little help from its friend and producer, George Martin.

Google Yahoo Deal Crumbling, Report

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Meghan Keane

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Google’s patience for the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation of its search deal with Yahoo appears to be running short. The search giant may walk away from the deal as early as next week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

'Lost Skeleton' Crew Returns for 'Cadavra' Sequel

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 10:04pm EDT by John Scott Lewinski

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A sequel to the low-budget spoof The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra turns an appreciative eye on the schlocky B-movies that have become cult classics among sci-fi and horror fans.

Wired.com Readers' Best Geek-o'-Lanterns

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 9:00pm EDT by Wired.com Photo Department

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Wired.com readers are nothing if not crafty. No medium or surface is safe from their geek icons, no matter how pulpy or gourd-like they may be. Every year we ask you to submit your best geek-o'-lanterns and just like the denizens of the netherworld, you do our bidding -- oozing en mass from the dark corners of the web to deliver juicy photo flesh to our feet.

Feast your eyes on the offerings of your fellow readers and rejoice that their contributions have spared our considerable wrath.

If your Halloween appetite is not sated by these delicious goodies, visit our gallery of favorite reader geek Halloween costumes.

Left:

Lupin III
Submitted by Donavon Cawley

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Venom Pumpkin
Submitted by rhesuspieces00

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Simple. Geeky.
Submitted by dosequis

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Tux
Submitted by bpa

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Domo-Kun
Submitted by Hoodles

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Deus Ex
Submitted by Tawnos

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Ziggy Stardust
Submitted by Carire Andersen

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Harry Potter on the Gryphon
Submitted by Chris Soria/Maniac Pumpkin Carvers

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Karlheinz Stockolantern
Submitted by Shawn Feeney

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Happy HALOween
Submitted by DigitalKleptl

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Gourddy Lee
Submitted by gnumoon

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Pumpkin Invader
Submitted by Jamie Molaro & Ian Reasor

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Darth Vader-kin
Submitted by Gabriel

ICANN Targeting Notorious Domain Name Seller

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 8:00pm EDT by Ryan Singel

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The net's naming authority is moving to shut down a domain name seller after learning its CEO was convicted of online credit card fraud. Security researchers say the Estonia-based EstDomains plays too friendly with online criminals, while the company defends itself by saying it already has a new CEO.

Round Those Corners With CSS

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 7:45pm EDT by Webmonkey

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Angular, boxy designs are great for furniture and old Volvos, but not web pages. Keep your content hip by encasing it within a set of smooth, rounded corners. The easiest (and most proper) way to create rounded corners is using web standards — HTML, JavaScript and cascading style sheets.

Retrial Date Set in RIAA v. Thomas

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 7:23pm EDT by David Kravets

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A federal judge has tentatively set March 9 for a retrial in the nation's only peer-to-peer file sharing case to go to trial. A judge declared a mistrial in the case, in which a jury ordered a Duluth, Minnesota, woman to pay $222,000 for infringing 24 music tracks. The mistrial concerned the level of proof required to find someone liable for copyright infringement.

Review: 'Zack and Miri' Scores With Funny Porno Farce

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 7:01pm EDT by Lewis Wallace

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Kevin Smith's oddly charming flick mixes it up, spiking a surprisingly standard romantic comedy with sci-fi blasphemy and good-natured, goofball raunch.

No Sheep Throwing Allowed on LinkedIn

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 6:00pm EDT by Adam DuVander

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Social networking site LinkedIn recently launched its application platform, but developer access will be limited to apps that fit with LinkedIn's business-centric brand. Silly stuff like sheep throwing, which is popular on Facebook, won't be accepted.

Real Ad Men Talk About Mad Men

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 11:30am EDT by Meghan Keane

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Every week on Mad Men, the men and women at Sterling Cooper create and design retro 1960s ad campaigns, all while obsessively chain-smoking, drinking and womanizing. Looking for a little fact in the fiction of Mad Men, Wired.com is asking some real-world ad executives to talk about the show’s realism and relevance to the advertising industry today. This week, we spoke with Bill Tucker, CEO, and Brian Terkelsen, EVP, of Mediavest.

Twitter as a Terrorist's Killer App

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 10:32am EDT by Noah Schachtman

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Could Twitter become terrorists' newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

Will Oprah do for the Kindle What She's Done for Books?

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 10:00am EDT by Chris Snyder

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Oprah is expected to give e-books a major boost by endorsing the Amazon Kindle on her show with special guest and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Usain Bolt of DSLR Cameras Sports Blazing Speed

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jackson Lynch

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The Nikon D3 pro-level camera's amazing speed is the tip of the iceberg. The 51-point focusing system and autofocus tracking offer flawless exposures that make big, beautiful prints.

This Smartphone Means Business, Lets You Toggle to Personal Life

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Steven Leckart

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As part of this year's Wired Test roundup, Gadget Lab reviews the Nokia E71.

Oct. 24, 1882: Koch Pinpoints the TB Bacillus

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Tony Long

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1882: German physician Robert Koch announces his discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus, isolating the cause of a scourge responsible for one in seven deaths during the mid-19th century.

Koch turned to the study of infectious diseases while still in medical school at the University of Gottingen. There, he was influenced by anatomist Jakob Henle, an advocate of the germ theory, which posited that communicable disease was transmitted through microorganisms.

Despite the work of other prominent microbiologists, including Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur, the prevailing view for much of the 19th century was that diseases arose spontaneously within an individual. Koch, piggybacking on the work of his predecessors and making huge contributions of his own, played a key role in finally debunking that theory.

Besides discovering the TB germ, Robert Koch also isolated the infectious bacillus for both anthrax and cholera.

Koch volunteered for medical service during the Franco-Prussian War and carried out much of his groundbreaking research on anthrax — including the discovery of the bacillus anthracis — while serving as district medical officer in the rural Wollstein, a farming region in the Rhineland.

He began serious research into tuberculosis after moving in 1880 to the Imperial Health Bureau in Berlin, which offered better laboratory facilities. By 1882, Koch had isolated the bacillus and published his definitive paper on the subject.

The German Cholera Commission sent Koch overseas in 1883, first to Egypt and then to India, to study the rising tide of that disease in those countries. His work led to the identification of the bacillus that causes cholera and eventually to a worldwide convention on the handling of cholera, which remains relevant to this day.

That work took him away from tuberculosis for a few years, but he returned to it after becoming professor of hygiene at the University of Berlin. Koch developed tuberculin, which he believed would result in a cure of tuberculosis, but his claims proved to be exaggerated, which damaged his reputation for a time.

The damage was not lasting, however, owing to Koch's many achievements that changed attitudes and approaches to the treatment of infectious diseases. Tuberculin also proved effective, not as a cure for the disease, but as a test for presymptomatic tuberculosis.

An immunization for tuberculosis, BCG, was produced in 1906, although it wasn't tried on humans until the early 1920s and didn't see widespread use until after World War II.

Koch, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1905 for his work in tuberculosis, also laid down the conditions, known as Koch's postulates, that must be met before a specific bacteria can be said to have caused a specific disease.

Source: Various

Look Out Below: Markets in Capitulation Mode

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Portfolio.com

Tags: [edit]

Investors around the world are running scared again today, dumping assets on an enormous scale. U.S. stock-index-future contracts fell by more than their 5 percent limit hours before stock markets opened in the United States. They are now locked at those levels. Markets in Asia and Europe tumbled. The sell-off has been triggered by one big company after another reporting weak earnings or expecting a slowdown ahead. Much of the world is sliding into a recession.

Permalink for 'Wired__Top_Stories/2008/10/24/Lenovo_S10__mdash__The_Best_Netbook_We_ve_Seen_All_Year'

Lenovo S10 — The Best Netbook We've Seen All Year

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired Editors

Tags: [edit]

Lenovo's foray into the low-cost netbook market is an instant classic, even if it merely excels at the basics.

Gear Gallery: New MacBooks, Best Tapeless HD Cams and T-Mobile G1 Phone

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Gadget Lab

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With all the emphasis Apple placed on the new design and construction, it's really the performance, rather than the aesthetics, that stand out for us. Our black MacBook (2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM) got an Xbench of 68.03 with a battery rundown of 2:52. On the other hand, our new aluminum MacBook (2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM) scored an Xbench of 116.70 with a battery rundown of 3:01. We know, we know ... Xbench is a synthetic benchmark. But that's a pretty shocking improvement in the performance numbers, and in our use of the new MacBook, it's noticeable across the board. This machine, in comparison to the very capable Black Book, just screams. The new Pro machine is also faster, in Xbench at least.

It's hard to evaluate aesthetics — a jaw-dropping beauty to one person is an eye-crunching catastrophe to another — but to my peepers, the new Mac laptops are some of the most handsome the company has ever released. I’m a sucker for the black bezel around the screens, and for the glass all the way to the edge of the display. (One bonus is that the laptops and the iMac, as well as Apple’s new Cinema Display, all share the same black-and-aluminum look. Jony Ive must be doing the dance of joy). This isn't the sort of redesign that makes your jaw drop, although it might be unreasonable to think that Apple has to reach that standard every time they launch a revision. That's a measure of how inflated our expectations have become. But the Apple notebook line is just miles ahead, and these two machines — especially the MacBook — only put them further out in front.

MacBook: $1,600 as tested, Apple

MacBook Pro: $2,500 as tested, Apple

Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

Read the rest of our in-depth MacBook and MacBook Pro review.

Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.

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Despite being released back in January of this year, the 1920 x 1080, 10x optical zoom SD9 is (still) the top performer. Touted by Panasonic as the world's smallest full HD cam, its slimmed-down profile makes it a real winner with the portability crowd. HD image quality and compression are noticeably ahead of other cams in this roundup, but there's still some ghosting and artifacts in certain (read: low light) situations. The menu system is classic Panasonic-simple and easy to learn, but the joystick has been moved into the LCD cavity, hampering movement and versatility. The rest of the controls are nicely placed with smooth well-modulated zoom and a fumble-resistant, dedicated optical image-stabilization button.

WIRED:Small, well-built design. Simple menu system. Top-notch battery life.

TIRED:Moving the joystick to the LCD-bridled shooting ease. Shrunken size compromised comfort and usability.

$800, Panasonic

Read the rest of Flash and the Pan: 4 Tapeless AVCHD Camcorders Tested.

Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.

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Standing apart from the crowd with its unique form factor, this Sanyo AVCHD video cam is a pocket-size video rocket, shooting 1080p at 30 frames per second with a 38-380mm zoom. The novel design and sharp video are complemented by functions like Face Detection and Face Chaser, which zero in on faces in the scene and both focus and adjust the exposure on the fly.

It works surprisingly well and delivers some delicious video to the SD/SDHC memory format. The 1010 also records fairly sharp 4-megapixel stills as long as ambient light isn't terribly low. In spite of all this goodness, Sanyo may have been asleep at the wheel by not including optical image stabilization. If you can live with merely digital IS, then take good look at this multifaceted camcorder.

WIRED: Easy-to-handle form factor. 10x optical zoom. 4-megapixel stills on the fly. Admirable video quality.

TIRED: No optical image stabilization. Sound is a touch weak.

$800, Sanyo

Read the rest of Flash and the Pan: 4 Tapeless AVCHD Camcorders Tested.

Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.

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Google's Android OS for the T-Mobile G1 is pretty freaking on-point for a first-gen software release. Sure, it has bugs — web pages don't automatically resize and the zoom feature blows — but it's also remarkably polished, bristling with nifty tricks. Take the long touch: Not unlike the Windows-born right-click, it brings up useful contextual menus. Long touch a field of text, for example, and you get the option to select it, copy it or paste something in (take that, Jobs!). And though Android’s first home is a touchscreen phone, you can tell that the OS was designed to work with hard-buttons as well.

In fact, if you can't abide fingerprints, you can get around the G1 quite well without ever smearing the glass. The keys are useful, but their physical location is a problem that ties into the most noticeable G1 bugaboo: its size. This is a big annoyance for us — nearly a half-inch thick — and its problematic girth is made worse by an annoying button bank.

WIRED: Android is legit, and future iterations should get even more impressive. 3G on a T-Mobile phone. Tons of apps that will keep you entertained for the duration of your 2-year contract — and all of them are free until Google decides on a way to charge. Relatively cheap, and data plans include T-Mobile hot-spot subscriptions. Snappy processor never seems to get bogged down, even with multiple apps running. Decent battery life: a day of heavy use, or three if you have no friends. Mounts on both Mac and PC as an external drive, allowing you to drag and drop music or videos.

TIRED: Fugly. Bulky. No 3.5mm headphone jack and no adapter that lets you plug your own buds into the HTC mini USB multiport. T-Mobile's 3G network is not as quick as AT&T's, and nowhere near as pervasive. We don't mean to whine about free stuff, but the included 1-GB MicroSD card seems a little dinky compared to the 8-GB iPhone you can get for $20 more. Camera is slower than a three-toed sloth to respond.

$180 with 2-year contract, T-Mobile

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Read our full T-Mobile G1 review.

Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.

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While the Ultra Motor A2B makes a clear impression on the public, the plush front and rear suspension with smooth and fat motorcycle-like tires ensure that most bumps and potholes leave little or no impression on the rider. The 500-watt motor in the rear hub and motorcycle-like twist throttle delivers a comfortable and steady amount of power as you cruise along at the federally mandated max of 20 miles per hour. Encased in the aluminum downtube, the lithium-ion battery yields just over 20 miles of range over varied Los Angeles-area terrain including moderate ups and downs, groceries and other cargo onboard AND very little pedaling.

Let's be honest, the A2B is more akin to a scooter than bicycle because of its 73 pounds and laid-back beach-cruiser geometry. But the A2B's designers were smart, by giving it pedals and keeping the maximum powered speed below 20 mph, you don't have to endure the DMV's motorcycle certification test, pay any registration fees or even insure your A2B as a motorcycle. The A2B is by far the eye-catching electric "bike" in the market and provides a nice option for those who are green-minded, have a fair bit of extra green in their wallets but don't want to shvitz their way to work and back.

WIRED: Plush, comfy and downright fun to ride. Eye-catching design leaves local yokels slack-jawed. Don't worry about Crackhead Bob boosting your battery — it's encased within the bike making it nigh impervious to petty theft.

TIRED: Throttle grip is hard on the hands. Heavy. Hard to imagine pedaling it more than a couple blocks. Downhill mountain-bike style drivetrain is noisy.

$2,700, Ultra Motor

Photos: Jackson Lynch/Wired.com

Read our full Ultra Motor A2B review.

Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.

Gallery: Computer Kittehs Pounce on Art World

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jenna Wortham

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LOLcats are invading the art scene. Thirty artists took inspiration from the syntactically challenged kitties (or is that kittehs?) to create sculptures, digital paintings and pen-and-ink sketches for a sold-out art show in San Francisco.

The artwork — including a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (pictured), a digitally rendered painting created from thousands of LOLcat images and an homage to the neon-suited Tron Guy — will be auctioned off Thursday during a one-night-only LOL Arts show in San Francisco, to benefit an adult-literacy program.

Here are some of Wired.com's favorite LOLcat artworks from the show.

Left:

2001 — A LOLcats Odyssey by Brian K. MacDonough
Acrylic on canvas

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I Does It by Amanda Siska
Etched glass

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LOLcat whiteboard by Josh Zubkoff
Paint on white board

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LOLcat Fractal Generator by Robert Burke
Silverlight-based application

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Nu & Improofed - Nao Wiff 50% mor fluff by Dana Armstrong
Digital painting

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I'm Hit by Allyn M. Cowan
Acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas

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Best in Shoe by Allyn M. Cowan
Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

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The Amazing Lolcat by Nina Kempf
Acrylic on canvas

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I Can Has Chainburger? by Emily M. Cox
Papier mâché (glue, water) and bags from six famous fast-food chain restaurants

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Neeyon Harblz by Dino Ignacio
Digital painting

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Dumb Icarus by Kinoko
Gouache on illustration board

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LOLHyoominz at Play by Jeremy Natividad
Digital painting

Found Photoshop Contest: Cubicles of the Future

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT

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For the past six years, Wired magazine's Found page has presented our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Turns out, this little exercise in futurism is one of your favorite pages (as we learned recently when it took a short sabbatical). So we've decided to turn Found over to our readers — what do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years?

Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then go to wired.com/wired/found to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page (giving full credit to the creators, of course). Your first assignment: Imagine the future of the office cubicle.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best Found idea and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The image must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your idea and how you made it.

We don't host the images, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions!

Vote on Found ideas submitted by other readers.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your found idea.

Submit your Found image.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

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Artifacts From the Future: Fridge Display Forecasts Apocalypse, Mold

Posted: October 24th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Steven Leckart

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Here's our vision of what a typical fridge might look like a few days before Thanksgiving in 2020. We imagined what new capabilities a fridge might have by then, and made some subtle changes to many pieces of bric-a-brac that you might find on a present-day icebox.

We'll continue to create a new Artifacts from the Future in upcoming issues of Wired magazine. But we'd like to see your prognostications too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years? Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions and vote for your favorites. Check out this month's Office Cubicle of the Future challenge.

The concept and most of the text for this Found came from writer Steven Leckart. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, photo assistants Sarah Filippi and Daniel Salo, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, Senior Editor Chris Baker and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image.

: Child's drawing of extinct animals: dinosaur, bee, polar bear.

: Calendar tracks family events, including defrosting grandpa

: Kid's b-day invite for a zero-gravity cruise on Virgin Galactic

: We support our troops in Venezuela magnet

: According to the Whirlpool Intellifridge: Auto Defrost scheduled for Butterball Tri-Breasted Six-Legger Turkey, Spoiler Alert: Ho Chi Minh House Shrimp Lo Mein, The Jetsons want to borrow 1 cup of protein paste

: Two £500 DNA-Coded tickets to watch the Microsoft Seahawks face off against the Dubai Roughnecks at Ballmer Memorial Stadium.

: Ziggy cartoon clipping: According to his DNA workup, he's already dead.

: Historic Route 101 magnet

: Beautiful Antarctica magnet

:

: 2018 Coppola Blue Label Water magnet

: Safari on Mars magnet

: Moose in Los Angeles magnet

: I Loved NY magnet

: A €100 casino chip magnet from Reno, Nevada.

Permalink for 'Wired__Top_Stories/2008/10/23/The_Flaming_Lips%e2%80%99_Wayne_Coyne_Talks_Kubrick__Pink_Floyd_and_Christmas_on_Mars'

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne Talks Kubrick, Pink Floyd and Christmas on Mars

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 8:00pm EDT by Eliot Van Buskirk

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The Flaming Lips burst out of Oklahoma with deafening noise and ambition to spare and remains one of rock’s most perplexing, powerful bands. Here, Wayne Coyne praises Christmas On Mars, Eraserhead and 2001 through the blissful haze of his painkillers.

Woman Arrested After Killing Virtual Ex-Husband

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 7:32pm EDT by David Kravets

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A Japanese woman has been arrested on hacking charges for allegedly hijacking a coworker's password to play the popular virtual world game Maple Story. While in the game, she killed her virtual husband, but the online murder appeared to have been committed by the coworker.

Take Your Code Back to Basics With Reset Stylesheets

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by Scott Gilbertson

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Different web browsers render HTML differently by default. A popular trick for making the code stick to one standard is to use a reset stylesheet. This Webmonkey tutorial shows you how to build one into your next project.

How to Speed Read

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 6:00pm EDT by How-To Wiki

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Most humans can't visually process more than 300 words per minute. But the pros can whip through 1,200 words in 60 seconds like a hot knife through a best-seller. Learn to overclock your eyes and quadruple your brain's processing power in Wired's How-To Wiki.

TSA Rules Hassle Owners of Small Aircraft

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 5:45pm EDT by Dave Demerjian

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The feds want to hold small aircraft to many of the same security rules the airlines have to follow. The people who own those planes say it'll be a colossal headache.

A Virtual Tour of JetBlue's Terminal From the Future

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 5:30pm EDT by Dave Demerjian

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At last — an airport terminal where you don't mind waiting for a plane.

McCain's Mortality Questioned in Medical Journal

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 5:02pm EDT by Brandon Keim

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A cancer researcher says Sen. John McCain has a 22 percent chance of dying in the next four years. The results of the calculations were published today in The Lancet. Other researchers disagree.

Rolls-Royce Considers an EV. No, Seriously

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:51pm EDT by Chuck Squatriglia

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As odd as it sounds, an electric Rolls-Royce makes a lot of sense.

Singularity Summit Kicks Off Saturday in San Jose

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:30pm EDT by Priya Ganapati

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The Singularity Summit will bring together speakers from different disciplines to talk about the pace of technological change, its impact and how it will affect us.

Review: 'Wii Music' Puts Improv Before Gameplay

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:04pm EDT by Chris Kohler

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Nintendo's new jam-based game couldn't be further from the goal-oriented precision tapping of Rock Band. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Yahoo's Inquisitor Search Tool Now Works With Firefox, IE

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 4:00pm EDT by Scott Gilbertson

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The Inquisitor search plug-in, which offers lightning-fast search suggestions as you type, and learns your habits the more you use it, is now available for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Mysterious Anti-Obama Text Spam Slams Cellphones

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 3:49pm EDT by Sarah Lai Stirland

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A sneaky texting spam campaign hits voters in Ohio. It attacks Barack Obama for his alleged connections to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers and provides listeners an excerpt from a Fox News documentary on the community organizing group ACORN.

Imagine RIAA, MPAA in Control of Handbag Industry

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 3:34pm EDT by David Kravets

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Imagine what the handbag industry would look like if it was controlled by the record labels and the movie studios. A handbag would only work with one outfit. Its contents would fall out the bottom at international borders. Handbag sharers would be sued.

LOLcats R in Ur Gallery, Pimpin 4 Adult Literacy

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 3:22pm EDT by Jenna Wortham

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Those crazy slang-talkin' felines pounce from the internet to a sold-out art show, with a silent auction to benefit a worthy cause.

Firefox Adds Experimental Gesture Support for New MacBooks

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 3:15pm EDT by Scott Gilbertson

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Mozilla is offering a sneak peek at the future of web browsing by releasing an experimental build of its Firefox browser, which contains unique swipe-to-browse gesture features that work exclusively on the new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops.

Supersonic Jet Car Targets 1,000 MPH

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 2:09pm EDT by Chuck Squatriglia

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The British team that broke the sound barrier on four wheels is back, eager to continue Britain's tradition for building the fastest cars on the planet.

Exclusive: Russian Coder Says He Hacked Georgia Sites in Cyberwar

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 2:07pm EDT by Noah Shachtman

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Government and independent investigators are still trying to figure out who, exactly, hit Georgia's websites during its August war with Russia. Now, one of the hackers who claims to be behind some of the cyber attacks is telling all.

Evidence in MySpace's Code Suggests OpenID Support Coming Soon

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 1:45pm EDT by Scott Loganbill

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Social networking site MySpace is getting ready to roll out support for OpenID, as hinted by some OpenID-specific links popping up in the code of members' profile pages. If MySpace begins offering OpenID to its 120 million users, it would be a huge boost for the fledgling standard.

Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 12:00pm EDT by Scott Brown

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Thanks to Facebook, I never lose touch with anyone. And that, my Friend, is a problem.

Hey, want to be my friend? It's more than possible; it's probable. Hell, we may already be friends—I haven't checked my email in a few minutes. And once we are, we will be, as they say, 4-eva. A perusal of my Facebook Friend roster reveals that I, a medium-social individual of only middling lifetime popularity, have never lost a friend. They're all there: elementary school friends, high school friends, college friends, work friends, friends of friends, friends of ex-girlfriends—the constellation of familiar faces crowds my Friendbox like medals on Mussolini's chest. I'm Friend-rich—at least onscreen. I've never lost touch with anyone, it seems. What I've lost is the right to lose touch. This says less about my innate lovability, I think, than about the current inflated state of Friendonomics.

Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all. We have achieved Infinite Friendspace, which means we need never drift from old pals nor feel the poignant tug of passive friend-loss. It also means that even the flimsiest of attachments—the chance convention buddy, the cube-mate from the '90s, the bar-napkin hookup—will be preserved, in perpetuity, under the flattering, flattening banner of "Friend." (Sure, you can rank and categorize them to your heart's content, but who'd be callous enough to actually categorize a hookup under "Hookup"?)

It has been argued that this Infinite Friendspace is an unalloyed good. But while this plays nicely into our sentimental ideal of lifelong friendship, it's having at least three catastrophic effects. First, it encourages hoarding. We squirrel away Friends the way our grandparents used to save nickels—obsessively, desperately, as if we'll run out of them some day. (Of course, they lived through the Depression. And we lived through—what, exactly? Middle school? 90210? The Electric Slide?) Humans are natural pack rats, and given the chance we'll stockpile anything of nominal value. Friends are the currency of the socially networked world; therefore, it follows that more equals better. But the more Friends you have, the less they're worth—and, more to the point, the less human they are. People become mere collectibles, like Garbage Pail Kids. And call me a buzz kill, but I don't want to be anyone's Potty Scotty.

Second, Friending has subsumed the ol' Rolodex. Granted, it's often convenient to have all of your contacts under one roof. But the great thing about the Rolodex was that it never talked back, it didn't throw virtual octopi or make you take movie quizzes, and it never, ever poked you. The Rolodex just sat there. It was all business.

Third, and most grave, we've lost our right to lose touch. "A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature," Emerson wrote, not bothering to add, "and like most things natural, friendship is biodegradable." We scrawl "Friends Forever" in yearbooks, but we quietly realize, with relief, that some bonds are meant to be shed, like snakeskin or a Showtime subscription. It's nature's way of allowing you to change, adapt, evolve, or devolve as you wish—and freeing you from the exhaustion of multifront friend maintenance. Fine, you can "Remove Friend," but what kind of asshole actually does that? Deletion is scary—and, we're told, unnecessary in the Petabyte Age. That's what made good old-fashioned losing touch so wonderful—friendships, like long-forgotten photos and mixtapes, would distort and slowly whistle into oblivion, quite naturally, nothing personal. It was sweet and sad and, though you'd rarely admit it, necessary.

And maybe that's the answer: A Facebook app we'll call the Fade Utility. Untended Friends would gradually display a sepia cast on the picture, a blurring of the neglected profile—perhaps a coffee stain might appear on it or an unrelated phone number or grocery list. The individual's status updates might fade and get smaller. The user may then choose to notice and reach out to the person in some meaningful way—no pokes! Or they might pretend not to notice. Without making a choice, they could simply let that person go. Would that really be so awful?

I realize that I may lose a few Friends by saying this. I invite them to remove me. Though I think they'll find it harder than they imagine. I've never lost a Friend, you see, and I'm starting to worry I never will.

Email scott_brown@wired.com.

Should You Trust an Internet Radio Alarm Clock?

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 10:58am EDT by Eliot Van Buskirk

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Alarm clocks evolved from bells and buzzers to the clock radio, and now to the internet radio. We found one that makes the our old model seem like a technological relic. Our only concern: Would a WiFi clock be reliable enough to wake us up for work each day?

Retooled Foods Trick Dieters Into Feeling Full

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 8:00am EDT by Associated Press

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British scientists experiment with foods that fool the body into feeling like it's had a rich, satisfying meal. By helping folks trim their waistlines, the researchers feel they're adding one more tool to the fight against obesity.

Oct. 23, 2001: Now Hear This ... The iPod Arrives

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Tony Long

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2001: Apple rolls out the iPod, eventually propelling the company to dominance in the digital-music field and changing the music industry forever.

Apple's Steve Jobs, who tends to overuse superlatives ("the best ever," "it’ll put a ding in the universe"), was not far off the mark with the iPod. Despite some conspicuous flaws — a wonky scroll wheel, no Windows compatibility, short battery life and a whopping $400 price tag — this innocuous-looking device was indeed a game-changer.

The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but its simple interface and internal hard drive (which evolved to flash memory in later models) set a new standard. Another advantage was integration with the easy-to-use iTunes software. Later, support for Apple's massive iTunes library provided iPod customers (Beatles fans excepted) with a vast trove of music to populate their players.

From conception to completion, it took Apple engineers and designers just under a year to come up with the original iPod player. It featured a 5 GB hard drive and was capable of playing music in several audio file formats.

Jobs announced the iPod to the world with his usual sly flourish: The iPod "puts a thousand songs in your pocket." That's exactly what it did, with more efficiency and elegance than any MP3 player that preceded it.

Still, the iPod was not an overnight success. Early sales were sluggish, and it wasn't until 2004 that the millionth iPod was sold. Things took off after the release of a version for Windows, followed by the rapid introduction of new models, such as the Mini, the Shuffle and the Nano.

Once it gained momentum, the iPod's dominance of digital music led to profound changes in the music industry, a cloistered fraternity notoriously resistant to change.

Mainly, the iPod allowed Apple to blow up the industry's CD-based business model, by making the downloading of singles both cheap and easy. Among other things, there was grumbling from music execs over the fact that people were able to rip their previously purchased CDs into their iTunes libraries without having to pay extra for the privilege.

As a result of this and the general advance of technology, the music industry is in the painful process of reinventing itself. Whatever emerges, iTunes, now easily the world's biggest music retailer, will have to be part of the equation.

Sales of the iPod peaked in early 2008, with more than 20 million of them clearing the shelves during Apple's first quarter. Not coincidentally, it was the most profitable quarter in company history.

Today, in all its variations, the iPod commands both the U.S. and foreign MP3 markets. It accounts for roughly three of every four digital music players sold in the United States.

This kind of dominance tends to be self-perpetuating, and Apple has capitalized accordingly, cutting deals with a slew of stereo manufacturers, carmakers and even airlines to make the iPod the music player of choice, thereby ensuring its continued place at the head of the table.

Source: Various

Gallery: The Best in Dead and Dying iPod Killers

Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Danny Dumas

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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the iPod must be blushing its scroll wheel off right now. After the debut of Cupertino's quintessential wonder-player in 2001, a torrent of upstarts started to flood the market. Some were legitimate iPod competitors. But most were no better than well-shined turds.

Here are a few of the best and worst contenders we've seen challenge the iThrone for ultimate MP3 supremacy over the years.

Show us your favorite portable music player.

Left:

The Toshiba Gigabeat

Yes, yes, yes, we know that Toshiba still makes the Gigabeat line, but solid hardware and a slick UI weren’t enough to prevent the Gigabeat S version from being smoked in sales by the third-gen iPod.

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A flash-based player, the YP-Z5 had some cool things going for it: a user interface designed by a former iPod engineer, touch-sensitive controls and, uh, a lanyard hook. But a lack of FM radio, voice recorder and adjustable EQ ultimately doomed the player to Samsung’s junk heap.

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Basically a repackaged Creative Nomad, the Dell Digital Jukebox was meant to take the iPod head-on. But it wasn't meant to be. Although the hardware was sound, Dell's online music store was AWOL leaving the Jukebox line to be discontinued in 2006.

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Monochrome display. FM Tuner. Blue backlight. Are these the ingredients to an iPod killer? Uh, no. They're the ingredients to a substandard music player that also had a tendency to suck its single(!) AAA power source dry in a hurry.

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Looking more bath toy than MP3 player, the Mixx was Iomega's idea for a "sporty" media device but was punctuated by pokey file transfers and an inability to sync with services like Napster or Rhapsody.

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With a two-year run, the 10,000-song-holding Karma went toe-to-toe with the iPod longer than most other MP3 players. But here's the thing: The Karma must have been a sinner in a previous life; not only cursed with hideous looks, it also sucked down batteries and had crash-prone hard drives.

Wired.com Photo Contest: Yellow

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com Photo Department

Tags: [edit]

We see you there, Wired.com readers, shaking in your black Filas in fear of this week's photo contest. What's the matter, feeling a little yellow? Good, then you've already started.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best yellow photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. Show us sunflower fields, hay mazes and Scotch broom. Gold fish, gold teeth and gold bullion. We want to see rubber gloves in a sink of dishes, lemon-meringue-pie-eating contests and armies of rubber ducks. You get the point, now get shooting.

The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.

We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!

Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Fall Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation, and Black and White.

Vote on yellow photos submitted by other readers.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your yellow photo.

Submit your yellow photo.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

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Rocketeers Pack Tech Muscle Into Model

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Preston Lerner

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.nTable {border:4px solid #948855;width:100%;} .nTable td {border:4px solid #948855;padding:12px 3px 3px;} .nLabel {color:#fff;font-weight:bold;background-color:#009be7;} .nData {background-color:#afb6ac;} .nLi {line-height:1.25em;margin-bottom:9px;}

Gene Nowaczyk's Piperr-8 is a flying laboratory capable of ferrying science experiments higher than 100,000 feet.

The Piperr-8 dwarfs off-the-shelf model rockets like the classic Big Bertha.	Estes Big Bertha	Piperr-8
Height	2 feet	17 feet
Diameter	1.6 inches	8 inches
Weight	2.2 ounces	375 pounds
Cost	$15	$35,000

Infographic: Charlie Kinks

Antennas receive GPS signals and transmit telemetry data to Earth.
X-ray ion chamber measures solar x-rays passing through the rocket for scientific purposes.
Barometric sensors track altitude.
Accelerometers monitor the rocket's orientation in space.
Flight control computers deploy parachutes based on altitude and acceleration.
GPS transmits the rocket's position to the data acquisition system.
Data acquisition system collects and stores internal and external temperature, acceleration, location, time, and system voltage.
Telemetry control board receives information from the data acquisition system. It filters out GPS, temperature, time, and system voltage for transmission.
Camera 1 shoots HD video.
Camera 2 overlays telemetry data on a video image for transmission.
Transmitter relays data packets down to mission control.
Batteries power the electronics.
Payload platforms house electronics for experiments to be conducted in flight.
Storage capsules hold any payload items that may need additional protection.
Parachutes (two each for payload/cargo bay and booster) are attached to multi-strand bungee cords.
Booster separates at apogee and returns to ground via small parachutes.

Pyro Geek Hobbyists Experiment With Homebrew Rockets

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Preston Lerner

Tags: [edit]

Mounted horizontally on a launch rail, the long, slender rocket exudes such papable menace that you cant' help but feel sorry for the poor bastards on the receiving end. Except that this isn't a wapon of mass destruction. It's a glorified toy built by middle-aged hobbyists moonlighting as rocket scientists. The only people in imminent danger are the guys standing around the makeshift launchpad. We're in the middle of Black Rock Desert, the vast, dry lake bed in Nevada (best known as the site of the annual Burning Man bacchanal), and at the moment there's nothing to hit for miles in any direction. But there's a very real risk the thing will blow up before it leaves the ground.

"All right, listen up," says Wedge Oldham, a sturdy, take-charge ex-Navy submariner, now a software engineer, who launched his own 30-foot-tall, 700-pound monster during a previous visit to the playa. This morning he's responsible for inserting the igniter into the motor of the rocket. The solid-fuel propellant is inert, so there's almost no chance it will catch fire prematurely, but the pyrotechnic compound around the igniter is notoriously flammable. "If something goes wrong, the thermite will go off instantaneously," Oldham says. "There will be no ducking or running out of the way. So make sure you're in the position you want to be in when you're incinerated."

On this scorching summer weekend, 75 amateur rocketeers and a few indulgent friends and family members have gathered in the desert to play Wernher von Braun for a day. Known as the Association of Rocket Mavericks, they're the top guns of model rocketry—and perhaps the shade-tree innovators- to-be of the aerospace industry. If NASA is the establishment, and upstarts like Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites are the contenders, then these guys are the hardcore wannabes—enthusiasts who pour their time, money, and considerable knowledge into these launches and even harbor dreams that their experiments will change the course of rocketry.

The ground crew tilts the rocket until it's vertical. Tom Rouse, a 53-year-old general contractor, looks on nervously as Oldham kneels in the silt and carefully slides the igniter into the engine. A compact man with a trim mustache, Rouse builds high-end spec houses by day and high-flying rockets at night. He's got $3,000 and innumerable hours invested in the missile on the pad, and he's more concerned about its immediate future than his personal safety. "There are so many things that can go wrong," he says. "The motors could be strong but the flight computers fail, or the computers could work fine but an O-ring fails. All it takes is one little problem and it's over in a second."

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

Technically, Rouse is launching a hobby rocket, but don't confuse it with the cardboard- and-balsa-wood kits fired off by kids since the dawn of the space age. This 13-foot scratch-built beauty features a carbon-fiber fuselage that houses four flight computers, four parachutes that will be deployed by compressed carbon dioxide canisters, and four solid-fuel motors that pack more thrust than a cruise missile. The rocket fires in two stages to maximize speed and altitude: Once the first three motors have burned out, they fall away and the fourth ignites. According to the simulation software Rouse used to plan the flight, the rocket should shoot straight up at least 12 miles before drifting, intact, back to the ground.

Hobby rocketry is divided into two major camps: one devoted to smaller model rockets and the other, epitomized by Rouse, dedicated to high-power numbers. A subset of this more ambitious world focuses on experimental motors, so called because they're built not by commercial vendors but by individuals who can make them as big and as aggressive as the laws of chemistry and physics permit. Three years ago, Rouse formed the Association of Rocket Mavericks to push the envelope.

"For some guys, it's simply a matter of packing as much propellant as will fit in a container, lighting the fuse, and running away as fast as you can," says Tom Atchison, who sits on the Rocket Mavericks board. "There's nothing wrong with that. But we want to raise the technology to a level where we can address some of the challenges faced by the aerospace industry. We're the early adopters. We're in a position to take risks that companies can't when they're fulfilling government contracts. We can work on alternative propulsion systems and innovative recovery techniques. We're saying, 'Let the unwashed masses play with these things and conduct experiments and see what they come up with.'"

Tom Atchison carries his rocket to the launchpad with his son, "We're the early adopters."
Photo: J. Bennett Fitts

The closest thing the Rocket Mavericks have to a celebrity is Gene Nowaczyk, who last year launched a gigantic rocket to nearly 100,000 feet. (For hobbyists, anything over 10,000 feet grabs people's attention, and flying into the troposphere, which starts at around 25,000 feet, requires some serious engineering. Thus far, only one amateur has made it beyond the threshold of space, defined as 62 miles, or roughly 330,000 feet.) Nowaczyk isn't here yet, but for the past few days his progress has been the subject of word-of-mouth updates ("Gene's on his way." "He's in Winnemucca." "He'll be here tonight."). Until Nowaczyk's follow-up project is ready to fly, though, Rouse is top dog. At mission control—a folding table 1,500 feet from the launchpad—all eyes are on his rocket as he presses the red button.

The thermite igniter generates 4,000 degrees of instantaneous heat, and Rouse's craft shoots skyward with none of the slow-motion gravitas of a space shuttle takeoff. There's enough smoke and fire to satisfy the most jaded pyromaniac. Then an audible pop!—a sonic boom—as the projectile breaches the sound barrier. After a six-second burn, the white plume shuts off, like a skywriting airplane between letters. The booster separates from the second stage, and after three seconds of coasting, the fourth motor lights. Shortly after the flame winks out, the rocket disappears in the blue haze.

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

The crowd breaks into a ragged cheer. But Rouse is apprehensive. "I don't see a chute," he says. "Does anybody see a chute?"

High-power rocket wisdom, engineering department, has it that going up is the easy part. The real challenge is recovery. Unlike NASA's onetime-use vehicles, model rockets are designed to be launched repeatedly. This requires an intricate in-flight ballet in which the rocket splits into several pieces after reaching maximum altitude and then deploys a series of parachutes to progressively slow the descent of each section. Due to a packing snafu, Rouse's rocket descends too slowly and is buffeted off course by gusty winds. But thanks to the GPS signal beamed from the nose cone, he recovers it unbroken about 10 miles from the launchpad. He drives back to mission control in his pickup with a broad smile on his face.

When he downloads the data logged by the flight computers, he determines that his bird flew to an altitude of 13 miles and reached a speed of Mach 3.47. "How many people have launched a rocket that went to 70,573 feet?" he asks an hour later, still stoked. "I can probably count them on my fingers."

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

Black Rock Desert is 400 square miles of forbidding wasteland ringed by modest mountains that are largely obscured this morning by the smoky haze from distant wildfires. The khaki-colored playa, parched and cracked by the relentless summer sun, is brittle on top and soft underneath, like a birthday cake gone stale, and each step elicits an audible crunch. In the bleak, seemingly lifeless terrain, the dozen or so RVs and tents look like a moon base.

At the center of the camp is the Rocket Mavericks trailer. A supersize satellite dish positioned to pick up a GPS signal looms overhead. Inside the trailer are a 24-megabit satcom unit able to pump out live webcasts, a pair of Wi-Fi systems that can light 4 square miles of playa, and a Silicon Graphics workstation. Two men sweat in the cramped, un-air-conditioned space as they wrench on a black rocket 7 1/2 feet long that looks like a scaled-down cross between a '60s-vintage X-15 rocket plane and a surface-to-air missile.

The elder one is Tom Atchison, gray-haired, energetic, and upbeat. Atchison, 47, discovered rocketry as a child while tinkering with gunpowder his father had given him to make fireworks. After engineering stints at NASA and HP Labs, he earned his fortune running tech companies in Silicon Valley. When his friend Dirk Gates, founder of computer component maker Xircom, mentioned that he was flying high-power model rockets, Atchison felt his old passion reignite. "I said, 'Wow! That's so cool!'" he recalls. "'Is it legal?'"

Space-going vehicles rely primarily on liquid fuel. But liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen are don't-try-this-at-home propositions—too expensive, too complicated, and too dangerous for most amateurs. Gunpowder propelled early generations of hobby rockets in the '60s, and it's still used for puny models. But by the '80s, amateur rocketeers were dabbling with bigger, much more powerful motors packed with solid fuels similar to the propellants found in Cold War ICBMs and the space shuttle's strap-on boosters.

Gene Nowaczyk (left) and Gary Stroick assemble the 17-foot, 375-pound Piperr-8. It's designed to fly 18 miles into the sky and return to Earth intact, ready for another launch.
Photo: J. Bennett Fitts

Rocket engines are rated on a letter scale from A to Z, and each letter is twice as powerful as the preceding one. Thus, a C motor is twice as powerful as a B and four times as potent as an A. Generally, model rocketry runs from A to G. Everything else is considered high-power rocketry. The largest off-the-shelf engine is rated O. Here at Black Rock, a couple of rockets are flying on experimental P motors, and the star attraction is Nowaczyk's king-size Q.

When Atchison rediscovered rocketry in 2001, the scene felt like the early days of computing, when the big companies—and big money—were in mainframes but the innovations came from geeks working out of their garages. He gravitated toward the Rocket Mavericks, who were more serious- minded than some of the other tinkerers, and quickly imbued the organization with a vision that transcended hobbyism. "The challenge is cheap, repeatable access to space," he says. "I could definitely see us doing orbital flights by 2015. We're focusing on the suborbital piece first because we have to develop the skills of the early adopters."

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

Atchison's pitch resonates especially well with techies. It's no coincidence that the Rocket Mavericks' roster is heavy on Silicon Valley stalwarts. Exhibit A is the owner of the black rocket that Atchison is helping to prep. Looking boyish in his floppy hat and baggy shorts, Steven Jurvetson is a 41-year-old managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As one of the most tech-savvy venture capitalists in the world, he's a celebrity around Sand Hill Road. He and his young son had been launching model rockets when Atchison introduced him to high-power models, and Jurvetson's first taste of the hard stuff—a launch on the playa in 2006—hooked him. "Blowing things up is inherently fun, and there's something about a rocket roaring into the air that excites you on a visceral level," Jurvetson says. "But along with the pyrotechnic appeal, rocketry makes the science tangible and allows you to engage it on a personal level."

Jurvetson is putting his money where his mouth is. His $10,000 Draper Fisher Jurvetson J-Prize will be awarded by Rocket Mavericks to the first rocketeer who makes two or more successful flights to 30,000 feet while carrying a 4.4-pound payload—a useful capability for academic research. Also, he has built his own rocket to go after what's known as Level 3 certification, the highest "degree" in hobby rocketry, which will allow him to play with engines rated class M and greater. Jurvetson has come to Black Rock in a rented RV carrying all his rocket gear, his son, and his high school buddy Erik Charlton, a marketing executive at Logitech who's here to make an L3 cert flight of his own.

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

Jurvetson is ready to assemble his motor. The solid-fuel propellant is molded into grains, also called slugs or chunks, that look like spools of thread and feel like pencil erasers. He loads them into a cylindrical case, much as he might slide batteries into a tubular flashlight. Then he screws everything together and walks his rocket out to the launchpad. There he discovers a problem: He can't switch on one of the two onboard flight computers—essentially a microcontroller that serves as an altimeter and orchestrates engine stages and parachute deployment. After a quick-and-dirty fix with superglue and a soldering iron, the rocket is ready for liftoff. Jurvetson lets his son press the red button. The launch is perfect. Five seconds into the flight, as the rocket carves into the clouds, his son asks plaintively, "Can I let go now?"

The rocket tops out around 6,000 feet. But this flight isn't about altitude; it's about a safe launch and intact recovery. Jurvetson meets both goals, satisfying the certification requirements. Following his flight, he's as amped as Rouse was after flying 10 times higher. Armed with his L3, he's ready for, well, just about anything. "In many industries," he says, "great ideas get lost in large bureaucracies, and it's people at the low end of the market who push the envelope. Who's going to explore crazy ideas like airbag landings on the moon? Rovers, pod racers, glider reentry?" The answer, unspoken, is clear.

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

Gene Nowaczyk, with his salt-and-pepper Van Dyke, muscle T, and cargo shorts, looks more like a tourist on a Las Vegas bender than a rocket scientist on a launch site. He smokes a Marlboro Light as he works on his rocket; a gallon bottle of Jose Cuervo is close at hand. For the record, though, he's not actually drinking the tequila, just swirling it around in his mouth and spitting it out. "I've got a toothache," he says.

Nowaczyk, 40, is a mechanical engineer who came to rocketry by chance. "My daughter wanted to do this," he says. "Then she turned into a girl, and Daddy turned into a boy." He formed a company—Payload Specialties—to develop so-called sounding rockets, which are designed to take instruments aloft on research-gathering suborbital flights, and next year he plans to fly his rocket into space. Eventually, he hopes to turn Payload Specialties into a moneymaking proposition.

But today's task is to replicate the 100,000- foot flight he made here last year. Nowaczyk, his partner, Tim Covey, and their friend Gary Stroick arrived last night after towing their trailer 30 hours from Missouri. They worked on the rocket until 2 am, and they were back at it by dawn. Watching them check the wiring, pack the parachutes, and screw the pieces together spotlights a fundamental but often overlooked truth: Rocketry is hard. Inspired entrepreneurs with deep pockets, like Elon Musk and John Carmack, have suffered countless failures despite spending millions of dollars on their rocket programs. Even NASA gets things catastrophically wrong every now and then.

Nowaczyk's rocket is a monster by hobby standards—17 feet long and 375 pounds. It looks like a big white cigarette with a silver needle nose on one end, three badass fins on the other, and a black section near the top that houses the flight computers. The homebrew Q-class motor is rated at 9,000 pounds of thrust. (The Redstone that propelled Alan Shepard into space in 1961 pumped out 78,000 pounds.) Nowaczyk has made room for a payload compartment to hold various pieces of memorabilia, including a baseball signed by members of the Chicago Cubs, and an experiment he's ferrying on behalf of a Missouri high school that will correlate altitude with temperature.

Photograph: J. Bennett Fitts

The rocket is so big that Nowaczyk transported it to Black Rock in dozens of pieces, planning to assemble it on the launchpad. Now he trucks it to a 22-foot-high hydraulic launch rail he fabricated himself. For six hours under the broiling sun, Nowaczyk, Covey, and Stroick piece everything together. Twenty minutes before liftoff, they power up the onboard video cameras. Nowaczyk turns his attention to the flight computer. Suddenly he murmurs, "We've got issues. It isn't arming."

Unflustered, Nowaczyk methodically prods the computer. Covey is concerned that the power will run out before reentry. "You've got 15 minutes," he tells Nowaczyk. "Twelve and a half ... Gene, you've got 10 minutes." After consulting the computer manual, Nowaczyk is finally able to boot the machine, and he calmly buttons up the rocket with four minutes left on the clock. The team hustles into a pickup truck and reaches launch control at T-minus two minutes. Wedge Oldham counts it down: 10, 9, 8, 7 ... Nowaczyk punches the launch button and the rocket streaks skyward on a white plume that sends dust clouds roiling away from the pad. A second later, a white light flares and the fuselage explodes in a fireball that showers debris over the playa.

There's a moment of silent shock and awe. Then come the groans. High-power rocketry wisdom, black-humor department, holds that the only thing cooler than a successful launch is an unsuccessful launch. But nobody's laughing now. Nowaczyk has sunk too much sweat equity and too many dreams into this project. Still, he manages a grin. "Negative launch angle detected," he jokes. Then he drives off to collect the wreckage.

Preston Lerner (plerner@pacbell.net)profiled auto-racing prodigy Colin Braun in issue 15.10.

Oct. 22, 1938: Xerox This

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Randy Alfred

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1938: Inventor Chester Carlson produces the first electrophotographic image. It's the precursor of the Xerox machine.

Carlson was an engineer who couldn't get a job in his field during the Great Depression, so he took work in the patent department of battery-manufacturer P.R. Mallory. A bottleneck in the work was making copies of patent documents: You had to copy them by hand (time and labor) or send them out to be photographed (time and expense).

Carlson set out to make a dry-copying process. He got his inspiration from the new field of photoconductivity: Light striking the surface of certain materials increases the flow of electrons. Carlson knew he could use the effect to make dry copies. Project an image of the original document onto a photoconductive surface, and current would flow only where light stuck.

Four years of tinkering in his kitchen and in his mother-in-law's beauty salon in Astoria, Queens, in New York City finally produced results in October 1938. Carlson's research assistant, Otto Kornei, put a sulfur coating on a zinc plate, which was rubbed with a handkerchief to give it an electrostatic charge. A glass slide with the words "10-22-38 ASTORIA" was placed on the plate in a darkened room and illuminated with a bright incandescent lamp for a few seconds.

Lycopodium powder (made from waxy moss spores) was sprinkled on the sulfur and then blown off. There it was: a near-perfect mirror image of the writing. Carlson and Kornei heated wax paper to fix the image.

Carlson had taken law courses at night while working at the Mallory patents department, and he protected his new invention with a web of patents. He needed development money to make the process commercial, but World War II made funding tough. More than 20 corporations, including IBM, Kodak, General Electric and RCA turned him down between 1939 and 1944.

He finally struck a deal with the nonprofit Battelle Memorial Institute in 1944. Battelle gave Carlson a 40 percent stake in the invention and assigned physicist Roland Schaffert to work on perfecting electrophotography.

Battelle licensed the technology in 1947 to Haloid, a Rochester, New York, photographic-supply manufacturer founded in 1906. Battelle and Haloid publicly demonstrated the process Oct. 22, 1948, precisely 10 years after Carlson's first successful experiment.

The photocopiers introduced in 1949 were a logistical mess: The user had to follow 14 steps, it took 45 seconds to make one copy, and you couldn't make more than a dozen copies from one exposure. More work was in order.

Haloid also asked a professor of Greek at Ohio State University to coin a better name than electrophotography. He devised xerography from the Greek for "dry writing." In 1958, Haloid officially changed its name to Haloid Xerox, more than coincidentally parallel to another Rochester firm, Eastman Kodak.

Haloid Xerox had its first big hit the following year with a pioneering automatic photocopier, the Xerox 914 — named for its ability to handle paper up to 9 inches by 14 inches. The company simplified its name to Xerox in 1961. Revenues reached $60 million that year and $500 million (about $3.5 billion in today's money) by 1965.

The Xerox machine and its eventual xerographic competitors had a profound cultural influence. The machines increased the efficiency (or perhaps the paper-wastefulness) of offices around the world, but cheap copying was also an early step in the democratization of publishing. If you wanted to publish a fanzine or any of the new generation of zines, no longer did you need to run the copies on the sly on the school, church or office mimeograph, or take them to an expensive print shop. Likewise for posters announcing band gigs, political demos and missing pets.

On the serious side, the Soviet Union tightly restricted access to photocopying machines lest they provide a new technology for distributing forbidden samizdat (self-published) literature and nonfiction. On the lighter side, in less-controlled societies, before there were office printers and before there was e-mail and internet humor, there was xerox humor: Copies of unofficial and often off-color cartoons and jokes circulated hand to hand and through postal mail.

Xerography also presented a serious, pre-digital challenge to the practical enforceability of copyright laws. Why laboriously hand-copy the terrific summary page from a library book when you could just photocopy it for a dime? Why indeed pay $8.95 to buy the 72-page monograph your prof assigned, when you could get a copy photocopied on 37 pages for just three bucks? Using a cassette recorder to copy your friends' LPs was just around the corner. The floodgates were open.

Chester Carlson collapsed and died while walking on New York City's 57th Street in 1968. He'd earned an estimated $150 million ($950 million today) from Xerox and had given two-thirds of it to charity.

Source: Steve Silverman's Useless Information

Gallery: Top 10 Wired.com Motion Photos, Decided by Us

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com Photo Department

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Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our motion photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest theme is yellow. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Aswan
Submitted by Damir Ivankovic

Photographer's comment:

"Egypt. Aswan. Night. Boy. Bike. 2008. Pentax K100d + 18-55/3.5-5.6."

:

Untitled
Submitted by instamattic.com

Photographer's comment:

"Bird. Seattle. 2006."

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In the Center Lane
Submitted by Steve Hanna

Photographer's comment:

"Approaching the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, California. Motion blur visible on tunnel, cars and Bay Bridge appear static. D300, Nikon 17-55/2.8, f/1.8 exposure 1/10s, ISO 400, handheld, manual."

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Buses and Builders
Submitted by Johnny Caldwell

Photographer's comment:

"Taken on my Iskra, a fantastic Russian medium-format camera made in the 1960s. This photo was taken on 400 ISO slide film, then cross-processed."

:

Osaka, Sunday Night
Submitted by J.M. Kezman

Photographer's comment:

"A Sunday night in August in the Minami district of Osaka, Japan. Photo taken with a Mamiya 7II + Fujifilm Provia 400X."

:

Pace
Submitted by Erica Gannett

Photographer's comment:

"I give people permission to watch. In most cases, when we are presented with an unusual person, we avert our eyes. I show people that our bodies are beautifully and authentically fragile — not in the sense that life is temporary, but life is mutable. Through visual representations of routines and demonstrations of physical abilities, we find ourselves examining the ordinary but witnessing the extraordinary."

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Red Canyon
Submitted by Dmitri Alexander

Photographer's comment:

"A nighttime ride in the Utah desert."

:

Siamese Glow
Submitted by Patricio LQ

Photographer's comment:

"Flashlights, speed lights and tripod on B."

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Boarding Action
Submitted by aaron 4

Photographer's comment:

"Self portrait I took last year. Set the timer for 15 sec, set the camera on the ground and ran to my skateboard. I'm not really that good at skating."

:

True
Submitted by Sasha

Photographer's comment:

"London"

Gallery: Top 10 Wired Motion Photos, Decided by You

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com Photo Department

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Sometimes the implied motion of a still photo can be even more thought-provoking than the motion itself, as shown by these 10 outstanding motion photos voted the best by readers from our contest submissions. Lars Larsen takes home the gold with his photo "Flaming bullwhip" at left. Larsen will be receiving a subscription to Wired magazine and a digital picture frame for his desk.

Since we had so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice Motion Photo Gallery.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest theme is yellow. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Flaming bullwhip
Submitted by Lars Larsen

Photographer's comment:

"The title says it all. Fire performer cracking a flaming bullwhip. One second handheld ISO 400 f/13."

:

Pop!!!
Submitted by Nathan Nowack Photography

Photographer's comment:

"Water balloon vs. a needle. Guess who won?"

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Pyrogirl
Submitted by Annie

Photographer's comment:

"After-dinner fun in Fiji."

:

Flamenco Dancer
Submitted by Rafael Aviles

Photographer's comment:

"Flamenco dancer twirling the manton at a show in Jerez, Spain."

:

(Not a) Pig
Submitted by FeebleOldMan

Photographer's comment:

"And you thought the phrase 'hungry hungry' could only apply to hippos. During lunchtime for these not-pigs at the Pelican Hideout, the bird keeper mentioned that the pelican's mouth can effectively hold up to 40 soft drink cans worth of liquid. That's a lot of beer and would probably make for one heck of a drunk pelican. 1/800 sec at ISO200, f/5.6 | 154mm on Canon 55-250mm | Canon EOS 20Da. Pelican Cove, Jurong Birdpark, Singapore."

:

Traffic on Interstate 65
Submitted by David

Photographer's comment:

"Taken on a country road overpass of I-65 near Tanner, Alabama. I was driving home from a long night shift at work and noticed a lightning storm, and happened to have my camera gear in my car. The taillight trails are northbound traffic. Sadly, with progress comes a price. Due to new billboard signs and construction for an interchange, this type of shot will never be possible at this location again."

:

Orange Ghost Train
Submitted by Cassius Seeley

Photographer's comment:

"Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi # Exposure: 8.0 sec # Aperture: F5.6 # ISO: 100 # Lens: 85.0 mm."

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Uncaged
Submitted by James Vlahos

Photographer's comment:

"Trained pigeons on a rooftop in Delhi."

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Long Jumper
Submitted by Mason

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Pariiiiiiiis
Submitted by David

Photographer's comment:

"Picture from the Arc de Triomphe in a small French town. Canon EOS 400d."

E.O. Wilson Returns to the Hive With Superorganism Tome

Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Josh McHugh

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Superorganism Tome authorName= josh mchugh creditType= illustration credit= Martin Woodtli --> With a new book on bugs, E.O. Wilson reignites the superorganism debate.

Today, E. O. Wilson is thinking small. He wants an ants-only conversation. Usually the Harvard biologist engages in big-think — ideas that have shaken up biology, evolutionary theory, psychology, and more, often embroiling him in heated debates and controversies. The hottest was after the publication of his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. His theories on genetic determinism got him tagged as a social Darwinist (technically accurate) and, worse, a crypto-fascist (not so much).

But right now butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. In November, he and Bert Hölldobler are publishing a monumental sequel to their Pulitzer-winning 1990 best seller, The Ants, and Wilson says he doesn't want any trouble. Really? Because there's controversy right there in the book's title: The Superorganism. It seems Wilson's troublemaking days are far from over.

Wilson and Hölldobler first explored the concept of superorganisms in The Ants. Could large groups of animals function together as a single entity with distributed intelligence? Did evolution work through such groups, selecting at the group level rather than the individual? The implications were staggering, not only for bugs but also for humans. Group evolution meant that altruism and self-sacrifice — i.e., morality — might be as much a part of our genetic heritage as hair and eye color. Many prominent biologists, led by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, said no, there was no such thing as a superorganism: Evolution worked on the genes of self-serving individuals only, not groups.

But the idea struck a chord outside the biological sphere. It became a powerful meme among computer geeks, as any Google search reveals. Programmers got to work building "ant-based" search and scheduling-optimization algorithms modeled on the foraging patterns of real-world ants. Cybervisionaries saw in the superorganism an ideal way of describing the networked global brain that they were just beginning to imagine. The idea meant the singularity might be nearer than anyone thought. Wired's Kevin Kelly drew on Wilson's theories for the conceptual framework of the Hive Mind, humanity's emerging cognitive interconnectedness. Even today, Kelly is writing about the One Machine and the Technium, a neologism he defines as "a superorganism of technology."

The Ants became a hard-science blockbuster, probably with more buyers than actual readers, like Hawking's A Brief History of Time. This time around, Wilson and Hölldobler have seemingly irrefutable proof that superorganisms exist. The new book is even more dense and less accessible to the layperson, but the renewed controversy will help sell it. Not only will it reignite the war with Dawkins, but it will also breathe new life into the beloved geek meme. Expect the term superorganism to start popping up again in every discussion of Web evolution. Mechanical Turk? Wikipedia? Hello!

Kelly is a bit disappointed with The Superorganism — "It's very ant-y," he says — because it doesn't explicitly address the application of social-insect insights to human pursuits. Wilson prefers to leave that to others. For now. When I press him on how the lessons from the pheromone-based ant language apply to humans using asynchronous messaging across social networks, he flicks me away as one might an ant crawling up their lapel. That'll all be covered in his next book (working title: The Forces of Social Evolution

Contest: Make Art From Starbucks Junk

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by How-To Wiki

Tags: [edit]

What do you get when you glue together a bunch of cups, stirrers, lids and drink holders from a week's worth of double lattes? If your first answer is "A 3-D model of Kaneda's motorcycle from Akira," then you're primed to participate in Wired.com's latest contest. Show us what you can build using only free swag from Starbucks. Post your creations on Wired's How-To Wiki.

Jobs Declares Apple the Third-Largest Phone Supplier

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 5:37pm EDT by Brian X. Chen

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs makes a rare appearance in Apple's fourth-quarter earnings call today, in order to tout the fact that the company is now a major player in the mobile-phone market.

Google Delivers Android Mobile OS to Developers

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 5:30pm EDT by Scott Loganbill

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The Android operating system for smartphones was released Tuesday, one day ahead of the launch of the first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1. Google's decision to release its software under an open source license marks a shift in the mobile-phone software industry, which has relied largely on proprietary code.

Want a Chimp? Endangered Animals for Sale Online

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 4:11pm EDT by Alexis Madrigal

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Endangered animals including chimps, rhinos and tigers, as well as elephant ivory are being bought and sold online, according to a new report. Ebay announces Monday it will start policing the illegal ivory trade on its site.

U.S. Identity Theft Convictions Up 26 Percent, Feds Say

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 2:44pm EDT by David Kravets

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Identity theft convictions in the United States increased 26 percent in 2007 from the year before, the Bush administration reported Tuesday. Still, 1.6 million complaints of identity theft are on file with the Federal Trade Commission.

Video Podcast No. 8: Huge Toys for High-Tech Quake Survival

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 1:52pm EDT by Alexis Madrigal

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Wired Science visits Berkeley's earthquake engineering research center, where scientists crush, shake and deform the walls, steel beams and columns that form our houses. Along the way, they've pioneered the technologies behind earthquake-proofing buildings.

Former DOJ Prosecutor Joins Defense in MySpace Suicide Case

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 1:15pm EDT by Kim Zetter

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A former federal prosecutor decides to take on his ex-employer in defending a woman against charges that she violated federal laws in creating a MySpace account used to bully a teenage girl who committed suicide.

The Internet as Confessional at PopTech

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 1:08pm EDT by Brian Chen

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Frank Warren's PostSecret website is a place where people can bare their souls anonymously. Warren will talk this week at PopTech about the how the internet brings people together in new ways and offers everyone the opportunity to make an impact on the world.

The Alt-Fuel Race Cars of 2025

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 1:02pm EDT by Keith Barry

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The Los Angeles Design Challenge invites the auto industry's wildest minds to create the race car of the future. What they come up with is pretty freakin' sweet.

New MacBook, MacBook Pro Have Super Speed, Foxy Facades

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 1:00pm EDT by Mark McClusky

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The new MacBook and MacBook Pro show up at Wired and we review the hell out of them. The MacBook Pro? Pretty, pricey and fleet footed. But the new MacBook? A powerhouse. In our benchmarking scores, it nearly doubled the speed performance of its predecessor.

LaLa: How Does 10 Cents Per Song Strike You

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 10:41am EDT by Eliot Van Buskirk

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Steve Jobs decreed the price of digital music to be 99 cents per download over five years ago, but competing with free has been difficult -- Jobs himself admitted that only three percent of the music on iPods was purchased from the iTunes music store. Could one problem be that the price of digital music is simply too high? LaLa hopes so.

Who Wants to Be Obama's Chief Technology Officer?

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 9:49am EDT by Meghan Keane

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Google's CEO seems to be jockeying for position to be Barack Obama's CTO -- a cabinet position that does not yet exist for a candidate who has not yet been elected. The bid is from a guy who, as head of a de facto tech bellweather, already has a pretty good job. So, let's all get into the act: we have some ideas who should be Secretary of Technology. How about you?

Startup Turns CO2 Into Fuel

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:30am EDT by Dave Demerjian

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A California company says it has found a cost-effective way to use carbon dioxide to make hydrocarbons, raising the possibility liquid fuels like gasoline might one day be renewable.

PopTech: American Dream a Biological Impossibility, Neuroscientist Says

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:03am EDT by Brandon Keim

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Neuroscientist Peter Whybrow says our idea of the American dream doesn't fit with our biological evolution and consequently won't make us happy.

Oct. 21, 1879: Edison Gets the Bright Light Right

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Randy Alfred

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1879: Thomas Edison crowns 14 months of testing with an incandescent electric light bulb that lasts 13½ hours.

Sir Humphrey Davy had produced incandescent electric light in 1808 by passing battery current through a platinum wire. But the voltaic pile was expensive and could be messy.

The invention of the dynamo in 1866 literally generated new possibilities (.pdf), and a few American and European cities had some of their streets illuminated with arc lights by the end of the 1870s.

Arc light (where the current flows from one electrode through a gas to another electrode) is bright and harsh. Edison wanted to "subdivide" the light by using the softer glow obtained when electricity passes through a filament and heats it up until it glows.

Edison was riding high on the fame and profits from his gadgets for telegraph printing, multiplex telegraphy, telephone improvements and the brand-new phonograph. He figured he and the 40 researchers at his Menlo Park, New Jersey, development lab could come up with a good incandescent bulb in three or four months in 1878. When he prematurely announced that he'd come up with the bulb, stock in gaslight companies took a dive.

Edison was unable to devote all his time to the quest: He had to redesign the receiver of his telephone system — which was being marketed in England — to avoid infringing on Alexander Graham Bell's patent. The lab also had to work on improving electrical generators and developing an electric meter to bill the eventual customers.

Edison's lab put a lot of effort into making a bulb with a platinum filament, but that work went nowhere, because platinum has a relatively low resistance. But gas bubbles in the platinum had led Edison to develop an efficient vacuum pump to remove the air from the inside of his bulbs. And that created a new opportunity: carbon.

Carbon conducts electricity, has a high resistance and can be shaped into thin filaments. And it's cheap. But it burns easily &#151 unless there's no oxygen around. The vacuum bulbs Edison had created for platinum were ideal for carbon.

Edison pushed hard on his research assistants, whom he more or less affectionately called "muckers." After testing hundreds of materials, they baked a piece of coiled cotton thread until it was all carbon. Inside a near-vacuum bulb, it stayed alight for more than half a day. The "three or four month" project had taken 14 months.

Soon, the lab got a carbon-filament bulb to last 40 hours. It had cost $40,000 (about $850,000 in today's money) and taken 1,200 experiments, but was ready at last for a public debut.

On New Year's Eve, 3,000 people visited the lab in Menlo Park to witness 40 electric light bulbs glowing merrily. Edison switched them on and off at will, dazzling and delighting his guests. These bulbs used carbonized cardboard.

Eventually, Edison's lab tested carbonized filaments made from plants as diverse as baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax and bamboo. "Before I got through," he said, "I tested no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths, and ransacked the world for the most suitable filament material." Bamboo became the favorite for several decades, but tungsten supplanted it by 1910.

Edison didn't start delivering electricity to paying customers until he opened the Pearl Street power station in New York City in September 1882.

So, what we see here is Edison leveraging profits from one invention to finance the next, announcing a product well before it's completed, dodging and defending intellectual-property disputes, missing a big deadline, working his development staff feverishly, unveiling a prototype in a splashy and impressive event, and still needing more time before it was actually available to end users — in select markets, of course.

If that pattern reminds you of a tech mogul of our own time, that's your business. Or his, actually.

Source: Electric Perspectives

Miley Cyrus Hacker Raided by FBI

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Kim Zetter

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A 19-year-old hacker who published provocative photos of teen queen Miley Cyrus earlier this year was raided by the FBI Monday morning in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Gallery: Historic Photos Foretell Future Quake Damage

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Betsy Mason

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: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

A major earthquake struck the Hayward fault in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area on Oct. 21, 1868. Though only a few thousand people lived on the east side of the bay at the time, the magnitude 7 quake took 30 lives and damaged nearly every building within several miles of the 160-mile-long fault.

The quake also did considerable damage in San Francisco, and became known as the Great San Francisco Earthquake until it was eclipsed by a larger jolt in 1906.

By digging trenches across the Hayward fault, geologists have found evidence of 10 more major prehistoric quakes over the last 2,000 years. The average time between those earthquakes is 140 years. With exactly 140 years since the last major quake, the Hayward fault could rock the Bay Area any day now.

With close to two million people living along the fault today, the losses would be much, much greater. To learn what a repeat of the 1868 earthquake would be like without the help of modern seismographs, scientists rely on photos such as those shown here and personal accounts of the event.

Court House, San Leandro

Left: The second floor of the courthouse collapsed in San Leandro, California, the town just north of Hayward. Afterward, the Alameda County seat was moved from San Leandro to Oakland.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

Almost every building in Hayward collapsed or was severely damaged, including this flour mill.

: Photo: William Shew/Courtesy The Bancroft Library

The Davis-Estudillo house in San Leandro was one of only two adobe buildings reported as damaged by the newspapers. There were actually more than a dozen others, all of which were razed within a decade of the quake.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

The epicenter of the 1868 earthquake was likely near Hayward, but the shaking did considerable damage to buildings such as this one, more than 20 miles away in San Francisco.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

The earthquake did enough damage in San Francisco to earn it the title The Great San Francisco Earthquake, which it held until 1906, when a quake 30 times as powerful struck just outside the city.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

Five of the 30 people killed by the 1868 quake were in San Francisco, which was then the largest city on the West Coast, with a population around 150,000 at the time.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

People can be seen here surveying the extensive damage to Morse & Heslep's flour mill in Hayward.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

Areas of San Francisco on "reclaimed ground" made of landfill suffered more damage. Loose sediment can behave momentarily as a liquid when shaken, causing buildings to founder.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

Many of the few thousand people on the east side of San Francisco Bay were left homeless by the 1868 earthquake. If a similar quake were to strike the Hayward fault today, more than 200,000 people could be displaced.

: Photo: Courtesy The Bancroft Library

One side of the foundation of this house in Hayward collapsed during the quake, though the building was otherwise intact.

Gallery: 10 Deadliest Earthquakes in U.S. History

Posted: October 21st, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Betsy Mason

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: Photo: Theodore Kytka

A major earthquake somewhere in California is virtually a certainty in the next 30 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Some of the most hazardous regions of the state are also the most populated, including Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. A major quake in one of these areas is guaranteed to be a disaster that will take many lives.

The United States has already had several deadly earthquakes. Over the past 140 years, major quakes have struck Alaska, Hawaii, California and even South Carolina and killed at least 60, but in some cases hundreds of people. The country's most famous earthquake killed 3,000 or more people in San Francisco in 1906. But geologists estimate the next big one to hit the Bay Area would surely make this list of the 10 deadliest in the country's history.

Left: The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured a magnitude 7.9 and ruptured 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault, which slipped as much as 20 feet in some places. Historians estimate that more than 3,000 people died in the quake and the ensuing fire, making it the deadliest earthquake in U.S. history. This photo, taken several months after the earthquake, shows the devastation, including the ruins of City Hall.

: Photo: Corbis

In 1946, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake on Unimak Island in Alaska triggered a tsunami that killed 159 people in Hawaii, five in Alaska and one in California. In this photo, a man (see arrow) is about to be killed by the wave in Hilo, Hawaii.

: Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

The second-largest earthquake ever recorded was a magnitude 9.2 in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1964. That quake caused the ground to shift vertically by as much as 50 feet in places. A 130-acre landslide demolished 75 homes. The resulting tsunami reached heights of 220 feet in places. In all, 128 people lost their lives, most killed by the tsunami, including 11 people in Crescent City, California.

: Photo: W.W. Bradley

This road in Long Beach, California, was damaged by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in 1933. Despite its lower magnitude, the quake killed 115 people and seriously damaged structures made of unreinforced masonry from Los Angeles to Laguna Beach, California. The damage to schools in the area prompted a mandate for better construction. Lessons from the quake were incorporated into the state's building code in the following years.

: Photo: Courtesy Hawaiian Historical Society

In 1868, a massive, sudden movement of the south flank of Hawaii's Big Island caused a magnitude 7.9 earthquake that triggered a tsunami and landslides that killed 77 people. All major earthquakes in Hawaii are related to the volcanoes there. In this case, the magma pushing up from below the earth's crust forced the side of the island to expand, sliding along the ocean crust and causing a major earthquake.

: Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

Though the 1971 San Fernando quake was a relatively moderate magnitude 6.6 and was centered in a sparsely populated, mountainous area outside of town, 65 people died and 2,000 were injured. Some of the most spectacular damage occurred at Olive View Hospital in Sylmar, California, pictured here, where 49 people died despite newly built, supposedly earthquake-resistant construction.

: Photo: J.K. Nakata/U.S. Geological Survey

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was the largest to strike the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1906 quake. The magnitude 6.9 quake was centered in the Santa Cruz mountains, 60 miles south of San Francisco and Oakland, but still managed to damage $6 billion worth of property and kill 63 people, most of them on a collapsed highway in Oakland. A car is shown crushed by houses in San Francisco.

: Photo: Pierre St. Amand

The magnitude 9.4 Valdivia, Chile, earthquake in 1960 is the largest ever recorded. It killed around 1,600 people and left 2 million homeless in southern Chile. Even quality wooden homes, shown here, were destroyed. The resulting tsunami killed 138 people in Japan and 61 people in Hawaii, making it one of the deadliest quakes in U.S. history despite happening on another continent.

:

The 1994 magnitude 6.7 earthquake that rocked Northridge in Southern California exposed major weaknesses in the building codes. Many of the 60 people who died lost their lives because buildings had weak lower stories, such as parking garages under apartment buildings. The Northridge quake caused $20 billion in damage.

: Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

In 1886, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in the eastern United States struck Charleston, South Carolina, killing 60 people. Almost no buildings in the city were left undamaged. More than 100 years later, the cause of this quake is still not well understood. A damaged brick house and street in Charleston are shown here.

California Is Due for Katrina-Style Disaster

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 8:03pm EDT by Betsy Mason

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The Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area has a major quake on average every 140 years. The last one occurred 140 years ago. The next one could be a disaster of Hurricane Katrina proportions.

5 U.S. Earthquake Hot Spots Beyond California

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 8:03pm EDT by Betsy Mason

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Some of the country's largest earthquakes occur outside of California in lesser-known earthquake hot spots. Here are five of the most dangerous seismic zones lurking throughout the United States.

How to Take Bokeh Photographs

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:30pm EDT by How-To Wiki

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It's the fuzzy photo effect with the funny name. Bokeh (rhymes with OK) celebrates the art of the lens blur, the natural effect you get when a camera's lens is set to capture a limited depth of field. Serious photographers can produce the effect with by tweaking the camera, but those of us without the fancy gear can get similar results using software.

Dropping 'Heroes' Dead Weight Could Shock Show Out of Slump

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:17pm EDT by Scott Thill

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Time-travel flakiness and standard-issue plot developments won't lift the show out of its death spiral, but thinning the superhero herd might.

Former Teen Cheerleader Defies RIAA Over $7,400 File Sharing Tab

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by David Kravets

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The Recording Industry Association of America is demanding $7,400 from a woman who was a teenager when she infringed the record labels copyrights on the file sharing program Kazaa. Whitney Harper of Texas, now 20, downloaded the songs between the ages of 14 and 16, and didn't realize she was breaking the law. In response, the RIAA says the woman, who is demanding a jury trial, should pay up instead of "choosing to drag this out."

RIM Could Rot With the Economy

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:21pm EDT by Betsy Schiffman

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Despite a slate of fancy new BlackBerry phones, Research In Motion could find itself in a pretty ugly situation, as corporate and consumer spending dry up in the slowing economy.

Real-Life Pac-Man Plays Out in the Streets of Portland

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Adam DuVander

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Attendees of this weekend's WhereCamp PDX took part in a real-life game of Pac-Man on the city grid of downtown Portland, Oregon, on Sunday. In this version of the classic video game, dubbed PacManhattan, four players in ghost suits chase a pellet-collecting, Bluetooth-headset-wearing Pac-Man. The game served as a demonstration of location-based gaming's potential.

Headaches Continue at Gmail, New Outages Reported

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Michael Calore

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Some users are continuing to have problems with Google's free e-mail service Monday. It marks the latest bump in the road for Google's web services as the company tries to put a particularly bad week behind it.

Learn to Profit From Piracy at PopTech

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 2:02pm EDT by Chris Snyder

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A former radio DJ, Matt Mason argues that piracy can be beneficial to businesses if they learn to use it as a marketing tool in a presentation at the annual PopTech conference this week in Camden, Maine.

Pop!Tech: Machine Therapist Bonds With Her Blender

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 1:33pm EDT by Priya Ganapati

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Machine therapist Kelly Dobson shows off her ideas for humans to interact with their machines, including a blender that responds to voice commands mimicking blender sounds, at Pop!Tech 2008 in Camden, Maine, this week.

U.S.-Iraq Deal Could Mean Jail Time for Contractors

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 10:41am EDT by Nathan Hodge

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Not too long ago, private security contractors in Iraq had a get-out-of-jail-free card; they could run around the country without a chance in the world that they could be prosecuted for anything they did. A draft of the U.S.-Iraq security deal, now making the rounds in Washington and Baghdad, could change all that. Guns-for-hire in Iraq could suddenly find themselves facing time in an Iraqi prison, if they broke the local laws.

Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts Blogging

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 10:28am EDT by Portfolio.com

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If you're looking for something -- anything! -- that might actually benefit from the present stinking rotting corpse of an economy, try blogging companies. We caught up with Six Apart CEO Chris Alden over a Belgian beer in downtown Washington, DC. As you might imagine, talk turned to the economy. And Alden offered a surprising note of optimism for his company.

Fate of America's First Bullet Train Rests With California Voters

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:00am EDT by Dave Demerjian

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Californians dream of the day when bullet trains will whisk them around the state. Proponents say now's the best chance to make that dream reality.

Note to Next President: Modern-Day WPA Will Save the Economy

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 6:00am EDT by Dave Demerjian

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Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have been all but silent when it comes to repairing America's failing infrastructure. The candidates can talk all they want about shoveling money into alternative fuels, electric cars and high-speed rail, but none of that will mean much if our roads, bridges and rails can't support them.

Oct. 20, 1984: An Aquarium for the Ages Opens

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Tony Long

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1984: The Monterey Bay Aquarium opens in California.

The aquarium occupies the site of an old sardine cannery at the edge of Monterey Bay, one of the most fertile and diverse marine environments on earth. That diversity inspired the idea of devoting the aquarium solely to the rich marine life indigenous to its own stretch of the Pacific coast. (However, a few concessions have been made to geography over the years: A colony of South African blackfooted penguins is currently in residence, for example.)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium was in the vanguard of the new generation of aquariums emphasizing conservation, education and research as much as exhibition space. It was the brainchild of four marine biologists from Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in nearby Pacific Grove.

The aquarium's original building, designed by a San Francisco architectural firm, was made to resemble the old Hovden Cannery that once occupied the spot. David Packard (yes, that David Packard) got the ball rolling by throwing in a spare $55 million (about $125 million in today's money) to cover construction and startup costs.

A new wing was added later, housing the Outer Bay Waters exhibit that focuses on the open-ocean environment. Other popular exhibits include the kelp forest, the sea otters and the visually arresting Jellies, which was such a hit that other aquariums have since copied Monterey.

The aquarium pumps water directly from Monterey Bay — at a rate of 2,000 gallons per minute — to feed more than a hundred exhibit tanks. The water is filtered during the day to keep the tanks clear for viewing, but at night raw sea water, rich in plankton and other nutrients, is pumped through the exhibits.

Through its sister institution, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the aquarium conducts marine-science research projects, including ongoing conservation efforts involving sea otters and tuna.

If he were alive today, John Steinbeck would be appalled by the tourist-trap tawdriness that characterizes most of Monterey's historic Cannery Row. But Steinbeck and his old buddy, Doc Ricketts, would have loved the aquarium. It's real, for one thing.

Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Gallery: Under the Surface at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jon Snyder

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: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and supports some of the most complex eco-systems and bizarre creatures on the planet. Yet we only know about a fraction (really, it’s roughly ten percent) of what’s swimming around down there.

But every day at Monterey Bay Aquarium, researchers are hard at work trying to understand what’s going on in the abyss. You may have been to the aquarium and seen the exhibit, but just like the ocean, there’s a lot more going on underneath the surface.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The aquarium is home to the largest jellyfish exhibit of its kind. Currently, Black Sea nettles, seen here, call this 2500-gallon tank home. The apparatus includes a circulating water flow that mimics ocean currents and keeps the nettle’s delicate skin from rubbing against the acrylic walls.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Behind the jellyfish exhibit, the luminescent tank looks quite different. The massive acrylic walls were custom-made by Nippura, a Japanese company that specializes in acrylic aquarium design and fabrication.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The jellyfish in the exhibit are cultured on site. These dishes contain specimens in their polyp stage of life. The polyp stage of the reproductive process was actually discovered here at the aquarium.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sustenance for the jellyfish is grown at the aquarium as well. Staffers create a mini-food chain by raising phytoplankton to feed brine shrimp, which in turn are fed to the jellyfish.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

In the past, part of the difficulty in raising these jellyfish was due to containment issues. Bill Hamner, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, developed the circular jelly holding tanks that the aquarium uses. All designs are open source, and the technology has been shared with other aquariums.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Underneath the exhibits is an intricate water distribution and filtration system. 2000 gallons of water are piped into the aquarium from Monterey Bay every minute. All seawater is filtered upon entering this system and sterilized when discharged. The result? Monterey Bay doesn’t get contaminated with foreign organisms.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Roughly one billion gallons of water per year pulse through the aquarium. To handle this deluge, a full-time staff is on hand to maintain the plumbing. The large tanks seen here contain sand filters for water running to the Outer Bay exhibit, while the smaller pipes distribute both warm and chilled seawater to animals that require specific temperatures.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Of the two million gallons of water collectively held in the aquarium, roughly half of it is routed into the largest display: the Outer Bay exhibit. The viewing window is 54 feet wide, 15 feet tall and 12 inches thick and was the largest of its kind when introduced in 1996. The exhibit houses tunas, sharks, pelagic stingrays, mahi mahi, sea turtles and the occasional great white shark.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

These African blackfoot penguins have been on exhibit since Y2K and are a huge hit with crowds — groups gather daily to watch aviculturist Danielle York feed fish to the flightless birds. This particular species is native to the cold currents off the coast of South Africa. To keep themselves warm in the frigid waters, they have dual insulation: tightly packed feathers coating a layer of soft down.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

California sea otters are a threatened species and one of the most popular creatures at the aquarium. Rescued when they were no longer able to survive in the wild, all the otters are treated with positive conditioning, which enables the staff to work with the animals more easily when it comes time for veterinary exams and handling.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Otter Aquarist Stephanie Cantabene holds the "Otter-Vater," a winch system that the staff uses to lift otters (comfortably confined to crates) from the sea level observation deck into an elevated otter paddock.

: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The aquarium’s founder, David Packard (of HP fame), had a vision for his staff: Don't dwell on your success. Instead look forward to new challenges ahead. This philosophy is echoed in every action taken by researchers at Monterey Bay — a dedication to exhibit development and storytelling through the power of collaboration while inspiring ocean conservation.

A $110,000 Motorcycle as Ugly as It Is Expensive

Posted: October 19th, 2008, 5:00pm EDT by Chuck Squatriglia

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The Confederate Motors B91 Wraith was an amazing motorcycle with a timeless design. What the hell happened with the Renaissance?

'Quantum of Solace' Reviews Unveil Dark Adventure

Posted: October 19th, 2008, 3:19am EDT by John Scott Lewinski

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If the collection of early reviews is any reliable sign, the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is an aggressive, tight, grim and moody thriller that leads directly into the next film in the decades-old series.

Gallery: Ironman Triathlon Tests Limits of Human 2.0

Posted: October 19th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Kat Wade

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: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Few competitions compare to the grueling gauntlet of endurance that is Ironman. The yearly triathlon in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, includes 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and a full 26.2 mile running marathon. Even second-place finishers have been known to cross the finish line on their hands and knees.

Now in its 30th year, the competition began as an effort to test the boundaries of human potential, and in 1997, those limits expanded even further with the addition of the physically challenged division. Today, as prosthetics and technology advance, what were thought to be prohibitive disabilities are simply minor obstacles due to the truly iron will of the competitors.

Click through the gallery to read two such competitors' stories and see the gear that helps level the Ironman playing field.

Left: Marc Aten, 34, assembles his handcycle the day before running his third Ironman. His bike-leg goal for this year was 7:30:00, and he finished in 8:10:09.

"The bike, well it was disappointing," Aten said after the race. "I just thought I would be a lot faster. Of course, my camel pack for my nutrition was clogged up somehow, so I had to take the gels out on the course, which my stomach just can’t handle. But I knew I didn’t have a choice. Talk about getting sick ... good times."

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Aten's wife, Tiffany Brenneman, helps him bring his racing wheelchair and handcycle to check in. The couple eloped in Hilo, Hawaii, two days after last year's Ironman triathlon.

Aten, who has no feeling in his right leg and had his left leg amputated a few years ago due to spina bifida, attributes getting up the nerve to ask his wife out on their first date to the confidence he gained racing his first Ironman in 2006.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

"If you can do Ironman, you can do anything," Aten said, before the competition. He finished with a time of 12:10:13.

"I truly loved it," Aten commented after the race. "Not only did I have to make sacrifices every day, but so did Tiffany. Sometimes I think she sacrifices a lot more than me. We are a team, so I knew that it was for the both of us. I truly love the journeys."

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

The pack of more than 1,700 participants splash from the starting line of the grueling 2.4-mile Ironman swim.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Jeff Glasbrenner took third place in the physically challenged men's division, swimming the 2.4 miles in 1:14:39, biking 112 miles in 6:43:51 and finishing off with a 26.2 mile run in 6:13:40. All while breaking in a new leg that he matched with a new shoe "so the pain would be even."

In 1981, Glasbrenner was involved in a traumatic farming accident, leaving him a below-the-knee amputee. Far from a tragedy, Jeff says it was his greatest opportunity. Like any situation, he says, you can either embrace it and make the best of it, or you can regret it and fail. Glasbrenner finished the 30th Ironman competition with a time of 14:18:58.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Jeff Glasbrenner kicks off all of his technology to swim a 1:14:39 race, taking third place overall in the men's physically challenged division.

"The bike was a bit windy," Glasbrenner said after the race, "but I loved the added challenge. It wasn't the best day to break in my new running leg or shoe. It normally takes a few months to get adjusted, so it was a painful day with plenty of obstacles."

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

With a time spread from 8:17:45 to 16:56:27, the race is a monster for all competitors. At left, No. 1180, Isao Funaki, 37, from Japan plods through the running leg of the triathlon.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Brian Leske came in fourth in the biking portion, with a time of 7:55:52, behind Jeff Glasbrenner's 6:43:51. Leske uses a different style prosthetic than Glasbrenner, which raises the question of how much the various designs play a factor.

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

A hard and lonely road, Marc Aten's time of 8:10:09 "was disappointing."

"I just thought I would be a lot faster," Aten said after the race. "The new chair felt OK. I mean, it was fast, but I couldn’t use it to its full potential. It is too small, so I was just in so much pain. I have huge bruises on my ribs. Looks like I bled a bit also, but my time was still close to what I thought I would do."

: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com

Aten completed the final "run" portion of the race with a time of 2:36:42, pushing his way past fire dancer Sarah Davis, who helped light the way through the pitch black. Aten earned himself fourth place in the handcycle division.

"At some points I just wanted to call it a day," he said. "Even at the beginning of the swim. Fear just can overtake you. I know we all have our moments out on the course, but to me Ironman represents life. Just focus on that moment, and there isn't anything to fear. Things didn't go as I wanted, but that is just how it is. I wasn't going to let anything ruin my day. I had a great time."

House Republican Resurrects 'Joe McCarthy's Ghost'

Posted: October 18th, 2008, 7:34pm EDT by Scott Thill

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Listening Post never passes up a chance to plug The Minutemen. Not the backwards border-watchers, but the San Pedro punk icons.

Afghanistan Diary: Unleash the Puppies of War!

Posted: October 18th, 2008, 9:50am EDT

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During their deployment to Helmand Province, Marines of B Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment enjoyed few social diversions. They worked out on a ramshackle bench press; jumped rope in the dust; or played spades. But mostly, a small pack of stray dogs (and a kitten or two) is what made life bearable.

Future Planes, Cars May Be Made of 'Buckypaper'

Posted: October 18th, 2008, 3:35am EDT by Associated Press

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Scientists say 'buckypaper' -- made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- could revolutionize the way the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made.

Big-Screen 'G.I. Joe' Completes Basic Training

Posted: October 18th, 2008, 3:28am EDT by John Scott Lewinski

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With the news that He-Man: Masters of the Universe died a slow death at Warner Bros., it's comforting for the action-figure fan in all of us to know that G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is set for its summer blockbuster spot next summer.