Well, the first ad for Microsoft starring Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld, aired yesterday. Much head-scratching ensued, as the advertisement appeared to “be about nothing”, as per the famous Seinfeld sit-com of 1989-1998. No Microsoft products or services of any kind were mentioned in the ad, although the company logo appeared briefly at the end.
The [...]

IDG News selects the best gizmos for 8/8, so you don’t have to…
Their lead-off item is the Toyota Winglet, which was introduced 8/01/2008 and is “personal transport assistance robot ridden in a standing position”. The Winglet seems to be knock off er, improvement on the Segway. Actually the Winglet is considerably lighter and smaller [...]

Walt Mossberg reviews & faintly praises Google’s new web operating system, er web browser, called Chrome. Mossberg calls Chrome innovative & smart, but then goes on to enumerate several many shortcomings.
Walt’s current browser rankings are:
1. Firefox 3.0 … “the best Web browser for Windows”
2. IE8 second beta version … “the best edition of Internet Explorer [...]

Watch Impress has some nice new pix of the new Sony PSP-3000 PlayStation Portable (PSP) in action.
…about the same as the old PSP-2000, but now with 85% NTSC colors and 2000:1 contrast and 8ms pixel response time. (the previous model’s performance stats were 53% NTSC, 400:1 & 30ms).
The new PSP “PSP-3000″ at 19,800 yen [...]

Samsung announces their new Hauzen Bubble Washing Machine. The Bubble has 22% less power consumption than regular machines and reduces water usage by 32 percent annually. Works via ultrasonics & cavitation … the imploding microscopic bubbles shake the fabric clean.
Hauzen futuristic new product introductions jipel - Samsung news release, August 29 2008

Google launches its new web browser called appropriately enough Google Chrome on 9/02/2008 in 100 countries.
Google Chrome is based on the WebKit open source rendering engine, the same one used by Android. Chrome incorporates a JavaScript virtual machine from V8.

For a somewhat pessimistic perspective on the prospects for Chrome, see Who cares about [...]

The new Sony T-series Cyber-Shot DSC-T500 ostensibly a 10.1 megapixel 5x optical zoom ultra-slim point and shoot still camera now offers hi-def 720p 30fps video recording.
We’ve used & liked the T series - they’re nice & thin. Also tried the newish DSCW-170 .. it has a good screen plus a wide angle zoom, altho the optional GPSCS1 gps dongle [...]

Use a Reuleaux triangle drill bit to create square holes (…well, almost-square holes).
…sort of like a Wankel engine for woodworking.
Reuleaux Triangle - Mathworld … via Hacker News

Nice scrollable panorama of the Beijing National Stadium ( 北京国家体育场 ) on 15.8.2008…
Beijing Olympics Stadium about 30 min before men’s 100m Final

RIM’s new BlackBerry Bold smartphone arrived in North America yesterday. The Bold is a bit bigger & heavier than most previous BlackBerry models, but offers a larger display (480 x 320), works over 3G networks and supports 802.11a/b/g. 1GB onboard memory + up to 16GB on a media card. Specs are here.
The Bold has been [...]