links for 2008-06-12

Hipster Futurephone

I finally figured out how to get my futurephone to pick up my GMail via IMAP. So it’s “pull” email for me.

Accordingly, I set the “new email” tone to be the little repeating piano motif from Brian Eno’s Music For Airports.

And my ringtone got changed from “Ace Of Spades” by Motorhead to “Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground. I am now cooler than you.

Tech Prediction Of The Day

As ultraportables, UMPCs, MIDs and futurephones get more prevalent, we’re soon going to see companies selling portable LCD monitors — basically, laptop monitors without the laptops, probably stored in tasteful leather / vinyl cases with a little padding to protect them that flip open to serve as a stand to prop the monitor up. Maybe they’ll even be touch / multitouch, with dual USB / VGA or DVI cables.

So if you’ve got a EEE or similar device and you need some more screen real estate than the small built-in LCD provided, for Photoshop or movie-watching or what have you, you’ll simply pull your external portable monitor out of your bag and plug it in.

Why nobody does this already, I don’t know. Maybe they do. But I haven’t seen one. (The thing in the picture — which I found here and can’t seem to identify — is some sort of industrial LCD, and not really what I have in mind.) And it’s simple tech. And obviously it’s doable from an industrial design perspective.

So let’s have it.

[Edit: of course, I forgot about Wacom’s Cintiq, which is one of the pieces of hardware I’d most like to own, but that’s pretty high end. I was thinking of something much more aimed at a general market — just a basic screen.]

This week's Doctor Who episode…

…was the best I’ve ever seen, and maybe the best Doctor Who episode ever. The second part of a two-parter, it’s about what happens when Donna and the Doctor show up at the Library, which stores every book ever written and is the size of a planet. But it’s empty — empty except for a small team of explorers, led by one Dr. River Song, who seems to know the Doctor…intimately.

It was fun and heartbreaking and strange, and romantic and amazing. And worth watching, if for nothing else than to see a woman who can literally knock the Doctor on his ass.

God, that’s a good show.

Later tonight: episode 2 of the third season of The Venture Bros. Whoo-hoo!

Moog Guitar

Holy hell. The Moog Guitar isn’t a guitar synth — which one would expect from the legendary synth manufacturer. Instead, it’s some kinda weird variant on an Infinite Guitar, though it has more functionality. It can not only infinitely sustain tapped or plucked notes, but the opposite as well — it can automatically mute notes. A third mode allows you to sustain only the notes you’re playing at the moment.

Really weird, but interesting. As a mediocre guitarist, this wouldn’t ever be something I’d buy, even if I could afford it — it’d be wasted on me. I’d get an Infinite Guitar instead.

But for more talented players, I bet you could do some amazing shit with this.

links for 2008-06-06