Cuppacafe

So here’s the thing. We’ve all had this experience, you have something in you hand (your cell phone, your glasses, Top Secret NORAD codes), you put them down (for just a moment), then you walk on, without pickling the item up again. Suddenly (a few moments to a few hours) later, you realize that you are no longer carrying what you once were.

Like I said, its happened to all of us (some more than others). So you cam imagine the pain felt by the guy who was reviewing the (at the time) the new mac Air, and accidentally threw it out with the recycling. No, really! Well, recently an Apple developer was out drinking with the (still new, and as yet unreleased) Apple G4 iPhone and, well, (apparently) got so tanked up, that he left it behind in a bar. where it was found, and then leaked on Gizmodo.

So, well, you can perhaps forgive co-founder Steve Wozniak who had a little bit of fun at his former company's expense by wearing this t-shirt.

Yea, everybody's a comedian, eh?

Apple engineer Gray Powell is an Apple Engineer, who visited The Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German Beer Garden in Redwood City, California, to celebrate his birthday, and later abandoned the iPhone 4G prototype on bar stool, as he leaves the bar in drunken state. Later, Gizmodo, a technology news blog got hold of it for $5000 and leaked pictures and videos. Police has started the investigation after Apple Inc. approached local police (read the complete story here).

The Perfessor

I think that before I discovered funnybooks, I was a fan of syndicated comics in the newspaper. I totally love it when these two worlds collide, as they did this week in Foxtrot. I already posted this on my funnybook site (and showed it to Walt), but since there is a sly tech side to this gag, I wanted to re-post it here. The real gag isn't obvious (I actually had to point it out to Walt), but it is there, and it is hilarious, so take your time.

(click the cartoon to get it large enough to read clearly)

The Perfessor

Hey there kids, are you an Apple fan? do you own a Toyota Prius? Has your car been recalled? If so then you are going to love this! it seems that Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, recently suggested that Toyota’s troubles with a defective accelerator pedal may have more to do with software, rather than mechanical problems. This apparently occurred after his Prius sped up while in cruise-control mode.

"Since my foot never touches the pedal," Wozniak told ABC News, the problem "cannot be a sticky accelerator pedal.... There might be some bad software in there."

He said the problem in his Prius might be related to the random acceleration issue that has forced Toyota into a massive recall of eight million vehicles worldwide and a halt to US sales and production of eight affected models.

Interestingly enough, Woz unsuccessfully tried to get the attention of both Toyota and US authorities months ago, when his own acceleration problems cropped up while his 2010 Prius was in cruise control. Well, thanks to recent interviews Woz granted to the media attention this week, Toyota has (finally) responded to him by offering to borrow his car for a week to diagnose the problem (as reported by The Los Angeles Times).

Wozniak told ABC his acceleration problem in his Prius can be brought under control by braking and by a radar system that regulates distance from other cars by slowing it down.

He also spoke to CNN about his car troubles, stressing that "I love this car" and downplaying his earlier comments to ABC about a possible broad Toyota software problem.

"It's more like a radio button that doesn't work all the time. The car will start to accelerate in cruise control. You can hit the brake to stop it," Wozniak told CNN.

Good thing the Toyota’s internal software isn’t designed by Microsoft, eh?

(more...)

So you think that the buzz surrounding the release of the super-large easy-reader iTouch iPad made tech-heads hyperventilate, then you haven’t seen anything yet.

Asustek, the Taiwanese manufacturer that essentially invented the netbook category, is trying to dream bigger than that.

Using the Waveface banner, Asustek has been playing around with some more radical design ideas, including a sophisticated wrist-top computer, a laptop that folds like a newspaper and a TV that works with gesture commands. (Behold the jargon-filled demo video.)

The watch-like device, the Waveface Ultra, is made out of a bendable display that can connect to the Internet, make phone calls and do a fair amount of data-crunching. In short, it’s a bracelet that acts like a smartphone.

Asus is hardly the first company to kick around the idea of bendable displays or wristwatch computers (remember Microsoft’s ill-fated Spot watch?). But its ideas are interesting because of what they portend for displays. All three products hinge on a lightweight, flexible display material with built-in computing smarts.

Much of the cutting-edge display work takes place in Taiwan, and PC makers like Acer and Asustek have the most direct insight into what the display companies have cooking. AU Optronics, for example, is one of the world’s largest LCD panel makers and was once known as Acer Display Technology before a merger.

Personally, what I find the coolest part of all of this tech is the “wrist TV” from Asustek because, quite frankly, I saw this little item probably 30 or 40 years ago (and no, not on something as forward-looking as Star Trek, but on something far more mundane). I first saw this little item in Chester Gould’s very cool comic strip, none other than Dick Tracy.

Yep, it was that futuristic flatfoot from the past who taught us about wrist radios (which became wrist TVs), antigrav devices, the Moon Maid, and all sorts of other clever devices. You can’t imagine how thrilled I am to learn that my present has finally caught up to his past.

The Perfessor

OK, we’ve already reported on some of the random silliness that has surrounded the release of Apple’s iPad, well, by all appearances, the pimp-slapping of Apple (and Jobs) is not going to go away anytime soon, as folks keep taking swipes at the goofy name.

Yeah, we like the MadTV version better, but, well, you know that there are just going to be some clunkers along the way.

Hey, they can’t all be gems!

The Perfessor

Steve Jobs gave it to PeeWee personally!