About those jetpacks

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Mark Urbin

I recently posted about flying cars and the question of where our 21st Century Jet Packs where.

I seems there are several Jet Pack companies out there, including Jet Pack, International, Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana of Mexico, New Zealand’s Martin Jetpack and Thunderbolt Aerosystems, based in San Jose, CA. 

Their products aren’t cheap, the low end ones run about $100,000 with the end end models cost in the $250,000 range. 

Most of their Jet Packs are actually Rocket packs and only can carry about a minute of fuel. So flight ranges are limited.  The Martin JetPack actually uses ducted fans, and claims a 30 minute (at 60 mph) range.  it is a bit big and still in the “barely off the ground” phase from what I can tell.

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Open source 3D Printer

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Mark Urbin

The RepRap.  RepRap stands for Replicating Rapid-prototyper, meaning that a reprap machine can make the parts to build another reprap machine.  Which is kinda cool. 

If you want to build your own click here.

Stuff made by a reprap.

I heard about this when the inventor was interviewed on The Future and You podcast.

Filed under: Gadget, Open Source | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Business card sized web server

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Ok, it’s a little thicker, but still way cool.  Tiny web server aren’t that new.  I remember seeing webservers that fit in a matchbox years ago.

The fact that you can etch this board yourself and that it uses a SD card instead of eeprom is slick.

Filed under: Gadget, Internet | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Yet another etext reader

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Another dedicated etext reader platform is due to join the ranks of the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.

This one, put out by Plastic Logic, it is based on the e-Ink technology that has been out for years.  The drawo of this reader is that is larger (8.5″ x 11″) and more “rugged” than a Kindle or Sony Reader.  No buttons either, it uses a touch screen technology to flip pages.

No word yet on what formats it will support, how etext will be loaded on it or what kind of DRM it will have.

Filed under: etext, Etext Reader, Gadget | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

HP Palmtop 200LX

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Mark Urbin

When I speak of PDA tech, I know of what I speak. 🙂 This is a picture of my first PDA. Before that I was a DayPlanner geek. This is actually a nifty bit of technology for the early 1990s. It has a 186 chip and I can get to a DOS prompt with it.

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Dell enters the small notebook market

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Mark Urbin

The NY Times reports that Dell is entering the low cost, mini-notebook computer market.

It’s called the Mini 9. For $349 you get Ubuntu LINUX. For another $50, you can have XP. The base model has 512 Meg of RAM and a 4 Gig solid state flash “hard” drive.   You can get more RAM and and a bigger flash drive, but the price goes up.  The model with 1 Gig of RAM and 16 Gig flash drive will put you back $450, which puts close to standard laptop costs.

They come standard with 3 USB ports, a 3-1 media card reader, audio I/O jacks, WiFi and an Ethernet jack.

Filed under: Gadget, LINUX, netbook | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

No Bluetooth support in Android 1.0

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Mark Urbin

According to the Android Developers Blog, Bluetooth support has been dropped from the upcoming Android 1.0 release.

The reason is that we plain ran out of time. The Android Bluetooth API was pretty far along, but needs some clean-up before we can commit to it for the SDK. Keep in mind that putting it in the 1.0 SDK would have locked us into that API for years to come.

The honesty is refreshing, but that is a major chunk of basic functionality missing.

Keep in mind, that Android plans on doing a lot more with Bluetooth than supporting wireless headsets. So I’m expecting a 1.1 release to follow up pretty quick with Bluetooth and GTalk functionality.

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Prices dropping on small notebook computers

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Mark Urbin

The NY Times calls them “netbooks”, which is what probably what one of their reporters heard someone call one at a Starbucks while he was trying to think of what to write to meet his deadline.

Small systems, typically running UNIX, and in some cases XP, and have been selling for around $400.  Now, the prices are dropping to the mid $300 range and will probably be flirting with $300 or or even $250 soon.

About the price of a SmartPhone, and in some cases, less.

I’ve been on the road for the past week, and yes, I did bring a laptop with me.  I really didn’t need to.  I just wanted something to back my pictures up on and do a limited amount of editing of both photos and text.

My gen one iPhone has been able to handle most of my short term Internet needs. I don’t need to find an Internet connection for it, which I would need for my laptop.

An Acer EEE PC would have fit the bill as well as the larger laptop I’m lugging.  Being lighter and smaller is a big plus.  Even with an 80 or 120 gig mini harddrive for backups, it still would have been smaller and lighter than the larger laptop running XP.

The NetShare app that Apple pulled from the iTunes store would have been a perfect fit with a small WiFi enabled laptop as well.

Filed under: Gadget, Internet, Smart Phone | Tagged: , , , | 10 Comments »

Previous thought on etext

Posted on August 16, 2008 by Mark Urbin

From a post on another blog originally made November 27, 2007.

Here is my geek punditry for the day. The Amazon Kindle etext reader is going to sell well. It will succeed for the same reason the iPod did. The iPod did not dominate the mp3 player market by creating a better mp3 player, they did it by greatly expanding the market through its iTunes service. People who had no idea of what an mp3 was or how to create/find them now had a way to purchase digital music easily and for less money than they paid for to get the music on CD.

The Kindle has Amazon shopping built in and thus a way to purchase etext at a reasonable cost. Amazon is attempting to follow the highly successful model Apple used, and it will probably work.

I’ve been doing the etext thing for years on my Palm based PDAs. There is an amazing amount of material available, including Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Beam Piper, and a good chunk of the Baen Books catalog. I am, however, a lot more geeky than the general public. I was not part of the Apple model because I knew about mp3s and the problems with overly restrictive copy protection.

Apple’s “Kindle format” is an encrypted version of the Mobipocket format common on PDAs such a Palm OS based devices. It does support non-encrypted Mobipocket, as well as text files and a few other open formats.

The Kindle’s biggest competitor will be the iPhone, once decent reader format is available (and either iTunes supports loading it or there is some third party software you could use without having Apple brick your phone), but I think the Kindle will hold its own, for the reasons stated.

Filed under: etext, Gadget, PDA | Tagged: , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Android rumors

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Perhaps the Google Android team is getting a bit nervous, with actual working LINUX based smart phones on the horizon.  Or it could be that iPhones are still selling like they were coated with crack and that Best Buy is going to start selling them as well.

Whatever the reason, the rumors of Android not being available to consumers until 2009 are getting competition from rumors that Android based phones may be availiable sooner.  The word is T-Mobile will have the device.

Update: T-Mobile uses a GSM network.

HT to Morgan Webb.

Filed under: Gadget, Smart Phone | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

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