It's not a case of "scornful dog eat dirty pudding" as they say in Jamaica but, rather, the result of reading David Kushner's eye-opening September 2008 Wired magazine article about the training requirements for the $30 million dollar 10-day-long trip of a lifetime (note that that's the price the most recent erstwhile space tourist paid; the next ticket could be as much as $45 million).

Highlights:

• You have to spend up to eight months living at the grueling cosmonaut training camp in Zvyozdny Gorodok, aka Star City. Put it this way: it's not the Four Seasons. Wrote Kushner about the cosmonaut-tourist wannabes, "They live in cramped dormitories ... which look more YMCA than 'Star Trek.' They slip and slide down frozen walkways past dilapidated Soviet structures. They subsist on cafeteria food slathered in mayo. They bury themselves in textbooks or ride 'vomit comets' and centrifuges."

• Charles Simonyi, the former chief software architect of Microsoft who stayed at the camp from September 2006 to March 2007 to train for his subsequent ride, told Kushner, "It's like going to a monastery. You have a small bag and a toilet kit and move into a dorm. You have to live very simply."

• Said the fourth client to take the trip, Anousheh Ansari, "You can't count on hot water. A lot of time, the water that comes out is dark brown and starts lightening up only after 20 minutes."

• Kushner wrote, "It's one thing to adjust to life in Star City — but quite another to endure the confounding, confining, and sometimes just plain goofy training regimen. The first challenge is the language .... All of the instructions, instrumentation and communications in space will be in Russian. So, for four hours a day, Garriott and Halik [the next two passengers to go up] slave over fat, dusty language books in class, then tote them back ... to study more at night."

Excuse me — but one trip through med school was more than enough misery for a lifetime.

I'll pass.

Here's a link to a photo gallery that accompanies the Wired article.

Although the project seemed threatened in early 2006 from all sides these were minor compared to the problems to come. The biggest concern at the time was lack of an LCD panel manufacturer, but Negroponte and CTO Mary Lou Jepsen managed to charm another eccentric Taiwanese billionaire. Wen-Long Hsu—founder of southern Taiwan’s Chi-Mei conglomerate—is the owner of the world's largest collection of Stradivarius violins, and he played one for them when they visited to sign contracts.

By the fall, everything was working great in prototype form. Quanta agreed to run its first batch, and even agreed to run a suspend-resume hibernation test cycle 1000 times on each test machine. Normally, test units were give this cycle four times, so it was a particularly unusual request. Then, at 3am on the first day of mass production, Jepsen got a call. Everything was shut down; the laptops were going to sleep and not waking up.

"All hell was breaking loose." She hauled ass to the manufacturing lab with a few other guys and started pumping the caffeine.

Eventually a Quanta guy named Gary Chang and an OLPC guy named Richard Smith ("He's from Arkansas, looks like surfer dude") solved the problem. "We were calling it the second shot from the grassy knoll," says Jepsen. Apparently, as the system was shutting down, electromagnetic noise was corrupting data, screwing up the instructions that told the thing how to wake up again.

At around the same time, the maker of the wireless chips, Marvell, decided to update the firmware for the radio, and they started to crash. "We had four people in four time zones working on that problem," said networking engineer Michail Bletsas. "Mark Foster in Taipei, me in Boston, someone in India, and someone in Santa Clara. We had to program a workaround on the fly: It's in the radio, something you're not supposed to touch under normal consequences."

"A lot of those stories weren't told," says Jepsen. "We weren't hiding it, everybody knew, but we weren't broadcasting it. We figured it all out, and shipped a million of them."

Threat Level Rising
By late 2006, Intel had finalized its specs for the Classmate PC. Though it would cost $30 to $40 more than the XO—the "$100 laptop" in the end cost $188—the Classmate had a faster processor, Intel brand equity and the option of Windows XP as the OS. (Bulk buyers could also opt for Linux.) It was seductive in that it wasn't the revolutionary product that the XO was, but something more familiar, and in line with what ministers of education might have been considering already. What's more, it was a reference design that regional companies could license and customize to fit their needs. And, perhaps, countries rife with pirated software infrastructure had plenty of free programs to run from the black market.

As it began pilot program, Intel's strategy was seen as more traditional too: Laptops could go to teachers, or loaned to students. It did not enforce Negroponte's logical but strict mandate, that the laptops be given to the children, and that they should only be deployed when there are enough to go around.

In the middle of 2007, Intel and OLPC entered into a partnership that was probably more of a hindrance to each other's initiatives than any sort of help. From the start, the deal was vague, more of a mutual appreciation society than a true strategic alliance. Six months later, it had dissolved in acrimony. OLPC accused Intel of pitching Classmate to would-be XO customers; Intel griped that OLPC wouldn't stop asking that the Classmate be discontinued in favor of the XO.

Meanwhile, Intel's more profit-minded operatives were hanging out in Taiwan, spinning the baby laptop idea to one of Quanta's arch competitors, a little known company called Asus.
On June 8, 2007, while both the XO and the Classmate were still deep in pilot testing, Asus introduced the Eee PC, a $400 mini-notebook running a warm-n-fuzzy flavor of Linux. Not only did it resemble the Classmate more than a little, it was unveiled at a press conference hosted by none other than Intel. It would be ready for sale worldwide by that winter, and when it did become available, boy did it sell like hotcakes.

Sales Figures, Sales Facts
"Selling like hotcakes" is an expression that doesn't mean anything in particular. In many cases, "selling a million" doesn't really mean anything specific either. I've heard OLPC people say they've hit the million mark, but in terms of actual shipments, it's not true.

Due to issues that have nothing to do with hardware—and largely to do with Negroponte's greater mission of educating the world's poor—the XO spent most of 2007 in beta testing. In early November, OLPC launched the "Give 1 Get 1" $400 charitable promotion for US buyers, but the first real bonafide XO deployment happened in Uruguay in on December 1. Confirmed orders might have topped a million at this point, but the number of existing XOs, both sold in the US and deployed en masse to schoolchildren in Peru and Uruguay, hovers around 500,000.

Ask Intel how many Classmate PCs are out in the wild, and you get a vague stat, somewhere in the "hundreds of thousands." Intel, too, promises large numbers to come. Portugal will be buying 500,000 of them for the coming school year, for instance.

The Eee PC, though, is already nearing 2 million sold, having hit 1.7 million in the first half of 2008. It is on target to reach a promised goal of 5 million by the end of the year. (By contrast, OLPC will most assuredly not reach 1 million by the end of 2008.)

The success of the mini notebooks has largely been due to price (even expensive ones rarely touch $600) and their intentionally internet-friendly design (you're not going to load up Photoshop CS3, but browsing and email checking work fine). They are also boosted by the negativity surrounding Windows Vista: By running Linux or Windows XP, they present a desirable alternative to the bulkier, more expensive, resource-heavy machines required to run Microsoft's latest OS.

In the wake of the Eee's success, over 40 mini notebooks have hit the market over night. The top four best-selling notebooks on Amazon fall into this catetgory.

At this point, even if the millions of third-world students eventually get laptops, it's unlikely that the XO will be the one they receive. Still, the past two years are definitive proof that Negroponte can take credit for the birth of an entirely new kind of PC.

And Negroponte does claim credit for the Eee PC's success. In fact, he says it's why he introduced the next version of the XO laptop—a radical two-touchscreen device aimed at a $75 pricetag—so early.

Encore?
I asked him why, with the first XO so clearly in its early stages of shipment, would he show off the XO-2. Sure, he doesn't have customers at Best Buy who may hold off because they know what's coming, but it seemed to take away from the momentum of the original device, not to mention confirming some of its criticisms (underpowered, cramped keyboard, etc.).

"When we announce something now that will be in play two years from now, it's partly to give the manufacturers something to start copying now," he says, elaborating, "If you go back two years and you look at the press, [the XO] was dismissed, it was not possible. Then came the Classmate, then Asus. If I underestimated anything, it was how fast people would [copy] it, even if they didn't get down to the same price or didn't have the same features. It was a movement—a hardware trend—that happened because of OLPC."

He also hopes that the announcement of the XO-2 concept, one that only exists in pictures, will stimulate small developers who work on components. Jepsen's new company Pixel Qi will focus on the next-generation of LCD touchscreen, one that can be made as cheaply as current screens today, but have capacitive touch built right into the active matrix, making it thinner than an iPhone screen. Others who saw the XO-2 renderings have already begun pitching solutions to the group.

Not a Manager
If there's one criticism made against Negroponte that's indisputable, is that he changes his tune.

In the beginning, Negroponte repeatedly affirmed that the XO was to run "Linux or some other open source operating system." After a long struggle that could easily be the subject of another series, the XO has recently been made capable of booting both its own Linux OS with Sugar interface, as well as Windows XP. (Critics say that Negroponte never allowed OLPC's Linux OS to mature so that it could stand up to pressure from the Windows advocates.)

Likewise, he was adamant at the beginning that his laptop be the only one shipped to these third-world educational programs where there isn't so much a "market" as there is a case for charity. He says now that if there is a true market—schools and families with the means and desire to buy their own laptops—others can serve it.

Inside OLPC, the leader's mercurial nature and changing priorities proved too much for the talent he had assembled. On the software side, Walter Bender and Ivan Krstic left after open disagreements with Negroponte—mostly pertaining to the adoption of Windows, but also to the overall goals of the program. Jepsen left in January 2008 in what she says was an amicable split, though other hardware experts including laptop maestro Mark Foster had abandoned ship earlier, possibly because they couldn't get along with Jepsen. Most people seem rankled by the credit that Yves Behar took as the "OLPC designer," most notably in a Wired article that would seem laughable to anyone who read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

When talking to staff members, there is a sense that no one really got along, and that the religion that Negroponte had instilled in his lieutenants, enough to get them to hang together for two years, has dissipated. The rocky Intel alliance and the move toward Windows were just the final disillusionments. Negroponte spoke the painfully obvious to BusinessWeek last March: "I am not a CEO. Management, administration and details are my weaknesses."

Pulling an Obi-Wan
Still, Negroponte and whoever has stuck by him charge onward. He said, to us and to others, "OLPC is not a laptop company." He himself said that to be taken seriously, you have to build hundreds of thousands of laptops every month; Quanta currently outputs a reliable stream of around 50,000 per month. Now that the mini-notebook movement is in full swing commercially, perhaps the focus should veer from hardware development. Why then stay in the hardware game? Perhaps it's telling that, on the OLPC website's own "Progress" page, nothing is mentioned after December 2007.

Bletsas—who remains hard at work on OLPC today—says that if OLPC does not stay in business, the laptop makers who followed the XO design cues will start doing what they do best: bumping the specs, upping the prices and keeping product too expensive for the foundation to use it in its educational mission. "Unless we keep designing, showing the world it's doable, I don't think they will follow in that path," he says. "If we stop at this stage, they are not going to come down enough for us to use their machines. We have to push them at least one step further."

Want more on OLPC's secret origins? Jump back to the earlier sections:
Part 1 - Genius, Hubris and the Birth of the Netbook
Part 2 - US and Taiwan's Hardware Lovechild

I imagine they're ducking eye-laser beams over in the Bloomberg newsroom, being volleyed all the way from Cupertino. More at: [Gawker]

Essence is quite cool, designed to hang on walls.
Comes with a 4m cable and a self-leveling hanging thingie on the back.
2ms response time, 100 mHz. It's made of brushed aluminum.
It also comes with a 2 x 15w sound bar, which can be detached for those people who want a home theater.

Now Philips guy is talking about Cinema One.
An all-in-one home theater system the size of a soccer ball.
Comes with DVD, iPod dock, integrated speakers with surround sound.

They have a new lcd-tv.
Heir of the Aurea.
Beautiful, very small frames
They are doing a show and tell video now

Talking about their new backlighting tech
LUX backlit. LED-based.
An array of LEDs in the back with 128 segments
For a 2,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio.
The segments are controlled individually.
The black level, they claim, is better than plasma tv.
Ambilight is included, and brushed aluminum.

There's also a new generation of Aureas.
But we don't know yet about it coming to the US.
They are talking about how much people love Aurea.
Now they are talking about Active Crystals.
I don't get this Active Crystal thing, but Miss IFA is going to be modeling them later...
So I'll be there like shareware.

Now talking about Internet radio.
New Streamium system.
Compact stereo system, with 160gb hard drive.
Nice design.

New MP3 player looks like the unholy son of an iPod and a Zune.

New alarm clock, second generation of that alarm clock that wakes you up with light. Obviously, they haven't been out drinking with me at night. No way I'm waking up with light.
It's called the Wakeup Light.

And that's a wrap.

[Instructables]

[Instructables]

Here’s a lovely LED Swing Wing I would love to one day make one for myself when I get a real house.

Made from plastic with fibre optic lighting inserted. On a dark summer night the swing creates a spectacular light show that lights up a whole garden in the most beautiful way. The swing was originally shown in the “Five playful chairs” exhibition in 2005 and has been a huge success around the globe. Over 30 000 internet sites has written about Sense as well as large newspaper articles in New York Times, Herald Tribune, Taipei Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine.

via uniquedaily, Design Page

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

LED Swing Wing!

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It truly is digital camera craziness this week with all of these new shooters flooding the market in time for the holidays. Another product announcement this week from Olympus comes in the form of two new FE-Series models – the FE-360 and FE-370, priced around $150 and $200, respectively.

The FE-360 and FE-370, both available now, are targeted towards entry-level shooters. Both offer eight-megapixels, image stabilization, face detection, shot previews and in-camera help guides, among other features. You can get full details after the jump.

New Olympus FE-Series Cameras are Smarter, Slimmer, and Easier to Use than Ever Before

Dynamic Duo Simplify Digital Photography with Image Stabilization, Face Detection, Perfect Shot Preview and In-Camera Help Guides

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., August 25, 2008 – Olympus introduces two sleek and stylish FE-Series point-and-shoot digital cameras that combine easy operation and smart performance to capture brilliant images at the push of a button. While small in size, the new FE-360 and FE-370 are full of impressive imaging technologies packed into colorful slim metal bodies ideal for people on the move.

Raising the bar for entry-level digital cameras, both models feature 8.0 megapixels of resolution; Image Stabilization for virtually blur-free images; Face Detection for crisp portraits; Perfect Shot Preview to see various shot options before the shutter is pressed; In-Camera Help Guides that make print manuals obsolete; a rechargeable lithium-ion battery for convenience; and an LCD backlight boost for viewing in bright light.

Each camera is available in red, blue, pink, black and silver and offers a unique set of features so consumers can choose the FE that best meets their needs:

FE-360:

* Stylish and affordable, this super-slim (0.7 inch) metal body fits easily into a shirt pocket or clutch for a night on the town;
* Its 3x Optical Zoom is matched with 20 custom shooting modes for virtually every scenario.

FE-370:

* Leading these impressive specs, Dual Image Stabilization virtually eliminates blur from shaking hands or moving subjects and joins with the TruePic™ III Image Processor to produce crystal clear images;
* A new Intelligent Auto Mode selects the appropriate shooting mode automatically based on where the camera is aimed, and optimizes the settings accordingly;
* Its powerful 5x Optical Zoom captures action at a distance that is displayed on a big and bright 2.7-inch high resolution LCD; and
* Smile Shot automatically triggers the shutter only when a subject smiles, and Expression Edit can even turn frowns upside down.

Image Stabilization for Virtually Blur-Free Photos
Digital Image Stabilization, offered on the FE-360, freezes the action with high ISO sensitivity and fast shutter speeds to help prevent blurry images often caused by a moving subject. Dual Image Stabilization adds mechanical Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization to Digital Image Stabilization to provide one powerful anti-blur solution for capturing great images even if the photographer or the subject is moving. Olympus’ mechanical Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization keeps images sharp by adjusting the CCD image sensor to compensate for camera movement, which often occurs in low-light conditions when shutter speeds are slower. By combining the two technologies, FE-370 users are able to take crystal clear images in virtually any shooting situation.

New Intelligent Auto Mode
Tired of changing the settings on your camera every time you’re shooting something different? Included in the FE-370, the Intelligent Auto Mode automatically identifies what you are shooting (Portrait, Landscape, Night + Portrait, Macro, Sports) and adjusts the camera’s settings to capture the best quality results. First-time users will enjoy this quick and hassle-free feature, which does the thinking for them and produces incredible images like a pro.

Face Detection
Face Detection tracks faces within the frame and automatically focuses (Face Detection AF) and optimizes exposure (Face Detection AE) for sharp, brilliant portrait pictures. Even if your subject is moving, the camera continuously tracks your subject’s face without having to press the shutter button. The FE-370 can detect up to 16 individual faces in one shot.

Perfect Shot Preview
Both cameras offer Perfect Shot Preview mode, which enables users to preview and select various photographic effects on a live, multi-frame window on the LCD before snapping the shot. This feature allows users to see precisely what the image will look like when adjustments are made, ensuring they are capturing the exact image desired. It is a great way for novice users to learn about the effects of different photography techniques, such as exposure compensation, white balance and metering.

Pre-Set Shooting Modes Featuring Smile Shot
Both new FE-Series cameras offer numerous pre-set shooting modes, such as Sports, Fireworks and Night Scene with Portrait. The cameras also offer VGA & AVI-quality video and sound, which enable users to shoot and share movies on the big screen or on the Web. The FE-370 features Smile Shot, which tracks your subject’s face to detect a smile and automatically fires off three consecutive shots so you never miss that perfect smile. This feature is great for parents hoping to capture hard-to-predict baby smiles. The FE-360 offers 20 shooting modes (including three for underwater shooting with the camera’s optional housing), and the FE-370 offers 18 shooting modes.

Perfect Fix In-Camera Editing
The FE-370 camera offers Red-Eye Fix, Exposure Fix and in-camera editing features such as resizing and cropping that enable photographers to edit images after the photo has been captured.

Expression Edit
Photographers sometimes struggle with making subjects say “cheese.” Now they can really turn a frown upside down when their subjects refuse to smile for the birdie. This fun feature on the FE-370 uses Face Detection technology to edit a subject’s facial expression after the image is captured. Four different expressions can be previewed in a multi-frame window on the LCD, and users can select their favorite expression at the touch of a button.

Easy Operation and Help Guides
The new FE-Series cameras feature an enhanced In-Camera Help Guides that make digital photography simple and fun for users of all ages and skill levels. The FE-370 offers Program Auto Mode. Located on the cameras’ mode dial, this option enables consumers to easily adjust ISO and white balance. A tutorial “shooting guide” educates users on tips for achieving specific effects, such as “shooting into backlight,” perfect for bright situations such as a day at the beach, and “adjusting image quality” for uploading images to auction sites. The shooting guide not only provides detailed descriptions for various situations and environments, but also sets the camera for optimum results with the touch of a button.

TruePic™ III Image Processor
The FE-370 features Olympus’ exclusive TruePic III image processor, which was developed for the demanding performance of professional Digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras. Olympus’ enhanced TruePic III Image Processor produces crystal-clear photos using all the pixel information for each image to deliver superior picture quality with more accurate colors, true-to-life flesh tones and faster processing speeds. TruePic III also captures crisp, clear images at high ISO settings, which are traditionally associated with increasing image noise or producing grainy photos.

Versatile Memory
All Olympus digital point-and-shoot cameras accept xD-Picture CardTM media. The FE-360 and FE-370 will also come equipped with an adapter, which will enable microSD memory cards to be used when capturing images. The microSD cards are emerging in consumer electronic devices, including mobile phones and PDAs. Users can also easily display photos on their HDTVs.

OLYMPUS Master™ 2 Software
OLYMPUS Master 2 Software provides the ultimate in digital imaging management. An intuitive user interface makes downloading to your computer quick and simple, and images are easily organized by folders or albums and searchable by date in Calendar view. Additionally, with one-click editing tools, such as red-eye removal, images can be touched up before printing or e-mailing. Online support, templates, firmware upgrades and other user services are just a mouse-click away. Use the optional muvee™ Theater Pack to create professional quality slide shows and DVDs from your pictures using any of several built-in templates.

Availability
The FE-360 and FE-370 will be available in August 2008. The FE-360 includes the LI-42B Rechargeable Battery and Charger, USB Cable, Audio/Video Cable, Wrist Strap, Manual, CD-ROM with OLYMPUS Master™ 2 Software, Warranty Card and microSD adapter. The FE-370 includes a new LI-60B Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery and Charger, USB Cable, Audio/Video Cable, Wrist Strap, Manual, CD-ROM with OLYMPUS Master™ 2 Software, Warranty Card and microSD adapter.

U.S. Pricing
FE-360 Estimated Street Price: $149.99 (U.S.)
FE-370 Estimated Street Price: $199.99 (U.S.)

Olympus