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1885: Sylvanus F. Bowser delivers the first gasoline pump. It improves safety, but can't guarantee low prices.
The automobile was yet to be invented, and gasoline was a byproduct of refining kerosene for stoves and lamps. Some of that equipment could use gasoline, but it wasn't much in demand.
You bought fuel in a general, hardware or grocery store. You had to bring your own gallon (or whatever) can, and the storekeeper would ladle the flammable fluid from a barrel. Wasteful. Messy. Dangerous.
To reduce spillage, Bowser built a pump in his Fort Wayne, Indiana, barn. He sold and delivered the first one to Fort Wayne merchant Jake Gumper 123 years ago today.
The self-contained unit included a wooden storage barrel, marble valves, a wooden plunger, a hand lever and an upright faucet lever. It was a success. Bowser formed the S.F. Bowser Company and patented his pump in 1887.
The Bowser pump soon became known as a "filling station," and Bowser started selling an improved model to the first automobile-repair garages in 1893.
Most places that sold fuel to motorists used the "drum and measure" method. Gasoline was gravity-fed from a large steel drum into a five-gallon measuring can. The motorist then carried the can over to his automobile and poured the fuel into the car's tank through a funnel that was lined with a chamois filter to remove grit and impurities. A big bother all around, and not awfully safe, either.
Bowser came up with a big improvement in 1905: He enclosed a square, metal tank in a wooden cabinet equipped with a forced-suction pump. A hand-stroke lever pumped the gas. This pump featured air vents for safety, stops that you could set to deliver a predetermined quantity and -- wonder of wonders -- a hose to dispense the gasoline directly into the vehicle's fuel tank. He called it the Bowser Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump. (Rival John J. Tokheim of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had fitted a pump with a direct-delivery hose in 1903.)
The word bowser soon became a generic term for a vertical gasoline pump. That usage has dropped away in the United States, but lingers in Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, Canada. A bowser is also a tank truck that delivers fuel to airplanes on the tarmac, and in Britain the term applies as well to self-propelled tanks carrying any fluid that is delivered directly to the end user -- for instance, water after a disaster.
Bowser's later career was quirky and litigious. He invented and personally marketed a backscratcher and a sit-down enema. He also sold postcards of himself next to the "Stone of Scone," part of the coronation throne on which British monarchs sit while being crowned in Westminster Abbey.
Source: Petroleum Collectibles Monthly, others
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comPASADENA, California – For all you moonshine makers who thought your hobby was just a guilty pleasure, a new spin on distilling may actually help save lives. Using ancient technology reduced to a microscopic scale, scientists at Caltech have created new tools to detect disease and purify water using tiny stills.
The creation of the still around A.D. 500 was one of humanity's earliest, and still quite popular, technological advancements. Traditionally, a still boils liquids in order to vaporize and separate them. Now, using nanoparticles and lasers, liquids no longer need to be boiled to be separated.
Removing the heat requirement from distillation means the process could be used to separate living cells without killing them, which could lead to advanced disease detection. Other applications include extracting water cheaply and efficiently from sea water in low-energy saltwater distillation plants.
How do they do it? Take a tour through professor David Boyd's lab and go behind the scenes of this revolutionary process.
Left: A green laser evaporates the water from a liquid. This is the final stage of nano distillation.
: Here is a diagram of the basic nano still technique. At top is the initial setup with gold nanoparticles sitting on top of a glass slide. The fluid waiting to be distilled is enclosed from above by a silicone rubber chip.
In the bottom diagram, a green laser operating near the resonant frequency of the gold particles is applied. The laser heats the gold nanoparticles, which then transfer the heat to the surrounding fluid. This small amount of heat is just enough to cause controlled evaporation over the gas bubble barrier, leaving pure water on the right-hand side of the diagram.
Click through to the next photo to take a closer look at each of these steps.
Illustration: Chemical Separations by Bubble Assisted Interphase Mass-Transfer, David A. Boyd, James Adelman, David Goodwin, and Demetri Psaltis
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis spin coater is used to spread out the thin layer of gold nanoparticles on the glass slide. A drop of the gold solution is placed on the slide and the coater spins extremely fast. This spinning spreads the solution evenly and coats the slide with a nearly uniform 15-nanometer layer of gold.
To get a controlled spacing of particles there needs to be a structure in place to hold them. To achieve this, scientists add a polymer to the gold solution. This polymer forms a uniform lattice to structure all the gold. But observant readers will notice there was no polymer in the previous diagram. Where does it go? Click to the next photo to find out.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis is an oxygen etcher. Once the glass slide is covered with the polymer-and-gold solution, this etcher burns off the polymer, leaving just the gold behind.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThis is a sample slide covered with a matrix of gold nanoparticles. The purple streaks on the slide are the nanoparticles, visibly spreading out from the initial drop applied to the slide during the spin coating. For those readers expecting the entire slide to be purple, scientists actually need only a small portion of the slide to be covered uniformly by the gold, so these streaks will suffice.
The particles have a unique property of rapidly dissipating heat, which is a key factor in how the still works.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comIn another part of the lab, the piece of silicone rubber is made. If you think back to the second image in this gallery, you'll recall that the silicone rubber encloses the fluid between itself and the glass slide. This piece of silicone is called the microfluidic chip because of the fluid channels carved into it.
The machine pictured at left is called a mask aligner. It creates a mold for the microfluidic chip. It does this by exposing an image (in this case, the shape and design of the chip) to a photosensitive material. The unexposed portion of the material is discarded, and the shape of the mold is all that's left. It's similar to a photo enlarger, but instead of a two-dimensional image, a fully formed nano structure is made. The final mold is then used to create fluid channels in a piece of silicone rubber. This silicone rubber ends up being the microfluidic chip.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comHere, the silicone rubber chip is drilled to create ports for the nano still. These ports will be used to inject solutions for distillation and to extract the distilled liquid.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comTiny plugs of silicone are the doughnut holes of the micro-fabrication world. Sadly, these plugs will remain uneaten.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comAfter fabrication of the microfluidic chip, we're ready to put it all together. The chip is glued to the gold-coated slide that we made earlier (pictured at center-left inside petri dish). Now we have a nano still, which has an electronic sensor attached for measuring the conductivity of the fluid.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comSometimes science is messy. This workbench is covered with a collection of syringes and gold nanoparticle-coated glass slides. The syringes are used to inject fluids through the ports into the channels in the still, which we'll see in the next photo.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comIn this photo, blue "Smurf blood" food-grade dye is injected into the nano still through a syringe. The dye makes it easy to see when the liquid has been distilled. The distilled water will be clear and the remaining water will become darker due to the higher concentration of dye.
: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comA low-powered green diode laser shines down into the still. The laser is roughly the same strength as an off-the-shelf laser pointer. Very little energy is needed in the microdistilling process thanks to the heat-dissipating properties of the gold nanoparticles.
Professor Boyd, the lead researcher on the project, reveals that this process was largely discovered by accident. "We had this problem with [an] air bubble, so we started hitting it with a laser. Instead of getting rid of it, we saw that we were actually causing the distillation process to occur, which was completely unexpected," Boyd explains.
You know it's hard up here for a blimp. Or so says Stephane Rousson, a 39-year-old Frenchman who's hoping to cross the English Channel in a homemade, pedal-powered airship. As a child, he was captivated by the Gossamer Albatross, the first entirely human-powered craft to fly the turbulent stretch from England to France. Hoping to repeat that 1979 feat, Rousson acquired Zeppy, a crank-driven zeppelin. Built originally by Jean Marc Geiser and his son Luc back in 1984, the craft's forward momentum and steering come from a pair of 10-foot movable propellers, churned by a recumbent bike hanging from the ship's belly; Rousson modified the chassis to improve its stability and power. He has logged more than 30 hours of flight time, including a four-hour hop around the coastal town of Toulon. But so far, no English Channel. The problem: Breezes over 5 mph bat the blimp around like a cat playing with a moth. Also, the heat of the sun raises the temperature of the helium in the Zeppy, which could cause it to explode. With the channel typically experiencing only three windless days a year, Rousson will have to time his five-hour, 34-mile flight perfectly. He plans to try again in September. Here's hoping the attempt doesn't go down like a lead balloon.
*Rejected headlines: Big Blimpin', Keep Your Blimp Legs Strong, Blimp's My Ride
1957: It's E-day, as Ford Motor Company introduces its newest make, the Edsel.
In an industry celebrated for its spectacular failures, the Edsel still takes the cake. Although as mechanically sound as other Ford products, the car was criticized from Day One for being too ugly, too expensive and vastly overhyped.
The 1958 Edsel was intended to be an intermediate-level brand, bridging the gap between the cheaper Fords and pricier Mercurys and Lincolns. The most-affordable Edsel (the Ranger) cost 70 bucks less than Ford's top-end Fairlane, while the most-expensive model (the Citation) cost more than a Mercury Montclair.
In the post-mortem that followed the Edsel's early demise, the faulty pricing structure was cited by Ford as a big reason the car failed. Sales weren't helped, either, by the fact that it rolled out of the plant at the beginning of a recession. But there was more.
The Edsel -- named for Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son who died of cancer in 1943 -- was the subject of an intense marketing blitz while still on the drawing board. The company promised an eager public something revolutionary, carefully baited the hook, and then failed to deliver. The Edsel was just another sedan on the basic Ford chassis.
Well, maybe not just another sedan. The classic barfly standard that everyone is good looking at closing time isn't true in this case. The Edsel was butt-ugly, period. A half century later, it's still butt-ugly.
Almost immediately after E-day, the superhype that had generated so much anticipation boomeranged on Ford. Automotive writers roundly trashed the Edsel, going so far as to compare the oval-shaped vertical grille to the female sex organ -- racy stuff for 1957.
Henry Ford II, who had opposed naming the car after his late father, believing it to be undignified, was no doubt furious and mortified. Robert McNamara, soon to become U.S. secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration, was president of the Ford Motor Company at the time and realized instantly he had a lemon on his hands. (A few years later, he'd be a little slower to realize that he had even a bigger lemon on his hands in a place called Vietnam.)
During the Edsel's first year, 1958, four models were produced and barely more than 63,000 were sold in the United States. Sales dropped in 1959, even though Ford had cut back to just two models, and on Nov. 19, 1959, barely two years after E-day, the company threw in the towel on the Edsel.
In one of those little logic-defying ironies, the Edsel today is a prized collector's item, fetching as much as $200,000 for a rare 1960 convertible.
Another victim of this historic automotive fiasco was the name Edsel itself. Although never a particularly popular boy's name -- rising to 400th on the 1927 list -- Edsel (from the Old German Adal, meaning "noble") has almost entirely vanished.
Source: Time magazine, Failure magazine
Let me start off by saying that I'm making this whole thing up.
Imagine you're in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver's license, Social Security card and bank account -- possibly using the identity of someone roughly the same age who died as a young child -- but it's getting harder. And you know that trend will only continue. So you decide to grow your own identities.
Call it "identity farming." You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.
There are some complications, of course. Maybe you need people to sign their name as parents -- or, at least, mothers. Maybe you need to doctors to fill out birth certificates. Maybe you need to fill out paperwork certifying that you're home-schooling these children. You'll certainly want to exercise their financial identity: depositing money into their bank accounts and withdrawing it from ATMs, using their credit cards and paying the bills, and so on. And you'll need to establish some sort of addresses for them, even if it is just a mail drop.
You won't be able to get driver's licenses or photo IDs on their name. That isn't critical, though; in the U.S., more than 20 million adult citizens don't have photo IDs. But other than that, I can't think of any reason why identity farming wouldn't work.
Here's the real question: Do you actually have to show up for any part of your life?
Again, I made this all up. I have no evidence that anyone is actually doing this. It's not something a criminal organization is likely to do; twenty-five years is too distant a payoff horizon. The same logic holds true for terrorist organizations; it's not worth it. It might have been worth it to the KGB -- although perhaps harder to justify after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 -- and might be an attractive option to existing intelligence adversaries like China.
Immortals could also use this trick to self-perpetuate themselves, inventing their own children and gradually assuming their identity, then killing their parents off. They could even show up for their own driver's license photos, wearing a beard as the father and blue spiked hair as the son. I’m told this is a common idea in Highlander fan fiction.
The point isn't to create another movie plot threat, but to point out the central role that data has taken on in our lives. Previously, I've said that we all have a data shadow that follows us around, and that more and more institutions interact with our data shadows instead of with us. We only intersect with our data shadows once in a while -- when we apply for a driver's license or passport, for example -- and those interactions are authenticated by older, less-secure interactions. The rest of the world assumes that our photo IDs glue us to our data shadows, ignoring the rather flimsy connection between us and our plastic cards. (And, no, REAL-ID won't help.)
It seems to me that our data shadows are becoming increasingly distinct from us, almost with a life of their own. What's important now is our shadows; we're secondary. And as our society relies more and more on these shadows, we might even become unnecessary.
Our data shadows can live a perfectly normal life without us.
---
Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT, and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
: Need to juice up your desktop music scene? Nuforce has just the thing. Its new Icon is a miniature, multithreat amplifier that can be used to pump music from a computer or audio player to your speakers and headphones. Although it's only 12 watts per channel, the Icon is powerful enough to act as a pre-amp to full-fledged stereos and on its own can drive most bookshelf speakers, producing a wide, spacious sound stage.
The sound quality from the headphone jack on my laptop is thin and distorted, but when I hooked up the Icon via the USB port and patched in my Grado SR80 cans, it was a revelation. The Icon uses a high-quality digital-to-analog converter to convert the computer's digital signal to sweet-sounding analog, and all of a sudden the music was crystal clear, the bass cleaner and deeper, and the overall sound infinitely better. The only downside here may be that you'll realize how crummy some of those downloaded MP3s actually sound. In the end, the beauty of the Icon is that it can be used in so many different ways. I've got it powering some outdoor speakers on my patio -- and it excels wherever you rig it.
WIRED: Sturdy silicon-like stand holds it vertically. Rad design and color choices: red, black, blue, silver. Small enough to take on vacation.
TIRED: Ethernet speaker cables are cutting-edge, but standard banana plugs would be better. Bass can be a touch thin in heavier (rock, hip-hop) music.
Price/maker: $250, Nuforce
Photo: Christopher Jones/Wired.com
Read our full Nuforce Icon Desktop Amplifier review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The Treo Pro sports a shiny, rounded, tuxedo-black exterior and a handful of practical OS "shortcuts." Aside from the industrial iPhone-like design lines, those shortcuts are enough to make even the most die-hard Machead grin and bear Windows Mobile (almost). At the top of our shortcut list are the dedicated WiFi button on the right side and customizable button on the left (ours was set for camera). Circumventing the main menu and tiresome nav made the phone a joy to use. The touchscreen, on the other hand, was far from blissful. Laggy and unresponsive, we found ourselves double- and sometimes triple-tapping -– even with the stylus.
Palm is definitely flexing its once-mighty muscle and trying to say it can build a stylish multimedia device with a touchscreen. But for $550, a touch interface should have more precision than this. We can only hope Palm continues to fine-tune the screen and ditch that archaic stylus permanently.
WIRED: Trim, light and pocketable. Shortcuts prove beyond useful. Decent 2-megapixel pics. MicroUSB Battery lasts almost two full days. 3.5mm headphone jack. PPT/Excel/Word and PDF-reading, of course. Google Maps and TeleNav GPS, which offers turn-by-turn directions plus target searches; e.g., gas stations by price. Ships unlocked.
TIRED: Menu scrolling is about as fluid as a piece of dolomite. Slippery "obsidian" plastic casing retains more fingerprints than the NSA. Noticeable screen glare. Curved design comprised by bottom-side USB/headphone jack that should be recessed more. Bluetooth not included in image send options. Only way to access microSD? Remove battery cover.
Price/maker: $550, Palm
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read our full Palm Treo Pro review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Look! Hardware that breaks –- on purpose! The Z10's apparent bendy kick-slide design may be flashy, but turning out an innovative design is about the only thing this phone has going for it. Though it's billed as a "pocket-sized mobile studio," this 4-ounce, platinum-trimmed phone is certainly no substitute for even a mediocre minicamcorder (Exhibit A: the Flip Mino). So why drop $500 on the Z10 when you can get a 5-megapixel camphone (Exhibit B: the Nokia N82) that shoots crisper stills and comparable vids? Beats us.
Maybe it's the intuitive editing suite: The Z10's storyboard feature let us cut together a montage of clips and pics with cinematic fades, circle dissolves, music and title cards in less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the OS wasn't nearly as user-friendly. We literally had to break out the instruction manual just to send a Bluetooth pic (no joke). Had Motorola spent even half as much time making the software as innovative as its breakaway hardware, the Z10 would have wowed us. But with its lacking OS and underwhelming camera, the phone didn't feel ready for prime time.
WIRED: 30-fps vid clips don’t look too shabby. Quick, easy uploading to YouTube and Shozu. Storyboarding was a cinch. Camera shortcut button, plus autofocus, great for snapping pics on the fly. Easy-to-access external microSD card slot is ready for 32 GB.
TIRED: 2.2-inch screen isn't ideal for peeping videos. Only 3.2-megapixel cam? (Tarantino wouldn’t settle for less than 5 megapixels). Only a measly 1-GB microSD included. Nav and Symbian UIQ more difficult to penetrate than Fort Knox. Curved slider makes lower keypad buttons harder to press.
Price/maker: $500 (unlocked), Motorola
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read our full Motorola Z10 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The Sylvania G Netbook is a fairly direct response to the Asus Eee PC 900 series, with an 8.9-inch screen, Linux OS and chicklet keys that make touch typing a fever dream fantasy. And while some of Sylvania's choices here are merely dreadful (the arrow keys are a mere 12mm wide — thinner than my pinky), it's actually the OS that royally blows it for the Netbook.
Ubuntu is known for being one of the most stable and simple versions of Linux on the market, but Sylvania somehow turns it into a nightmare on this system. For a computer ostensibly designed for inexperienced users, it's a disaster. I had trouble with the Ubuntu installation on the Netbook from the start: Blank screens on bootup. MPEGs wouldn't play and codec installations repeatedly failed (or even crashed the machine). Help files weren't installed. And most annoying of all, the battery meter couldn't decide whether the computer was plugged in, and pegged battery life remaining at 0 or 2 percent no matter how long we charged it. The Netbook abruptly shut itself off on at least one occasion, possibly convinced that it was out of juice.
With stability this dismal, the specs are largely irrelevant. But if you're willing to invest the time to work through the Netbook's quirks and faults, it could make a great replacement for your desk calculator. —Christopher Null
WIRED: Has a real hard drive (80 GB) instead of flash storage. Includes three USB ports and an SD card reader. Comes in colors. Bright screen for this category.
TIRED: Slower than a sedated slug at just about every app despite 1.6-GHz Atom chip and 1-GB RAM (standard $399 model includes just 512-MB RAM). Cartoonish styling. Considerably heavier than advertised (and the Eee PC 900) at 2.6 pounds. Far too buggy to be taken seriously.
Price/maker: $450 (as tested), Sylvania
Photo courtesy Sylvania
Read our full Sylvania G Netbook review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Think of this 26-inch TV from Samsung as any one of last year's larger models, shrunk down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only 720p, but its bright, detailed picture is impressive and its vivid color is surprisingly accurate for a set this small. It scores surprisingly well in our video-processing tests, even besting many of this year's small models. Sure, this model is a bit challenged in the areas of de-interlacing 24-fps film-based HD sources and removing jaggies from diagonal lines, but then so are many of the 32-inch and smaller TVs we've tested this year. And who really worries about 24 FPS film sources on a 26-incher besides geeks like us? Unlike many small sets, though, the Samsung's noise reduction performs beautifully. We saw good results leaving it in "auto" for all but the crappiest video, and only had to really adjust for our truly hideous NR test clip. Hardcore testing aside, the Samsung's good NR combined with its great picture and color delivered where it matters the most: Our HD and SD test movies looked awesome, as did satellite HDTV and output from our 360. —Chuck Cage
WIRED: Attractive, simple remote-control. Side ports (HDMI, S-Video and composite) make hooking up a 360 or camcorder a breeze. Optical digital audio out -- perfect for tying into that massive dorm-theater sound system.
TIRED: Some video-processing issues. 1366 x 728 native resolution makes it a not-so-great computer monitor unless you're over 40 and want to read without your glasses.
Price/maker: $550, Samsung
Read our full Samsung LN26A450C1 LCD TV review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The HP TouchSmart IQ506 is an update to last year's all-in-one touchscreen, the TouchSmart IQ770. This year, HP went for a countertop-friendly design by packing all the components into the IQ506's brilliant 22-inch, touch-sensitive display. As a whole, this makes for a much more streamlined and clutter-free presentation compared to its predecessor. In terms of general ease and responsiveness, the IQ506's touchscreen does a marginally good job. Common maneuvers like double taps and click-and-drag highlighting can be pulled off with minimal hassle. Even problem areas like corners were accessible with relatively effortless finger pokes.
Save for a pinch/zoom gesture, however, all the image-rotating fun we were expecting was largely nonexistent. In its defense, leaving notes, creating calendar reminders and a host of other "bulletin board" tasks were a cinch using the TouchSmart dashboard. But even though you can incorporate non-dashboard programs like Firefox into the interface, opening these applications kicks you back out to the Vista desktop. On one hand, the system is a great value when one compares the sticker price to the components, but it's disconcerting that a $1,500 computer lacks the flair and usability of a relatively inexpensive device like the iPhone. We've got our fingers crossed for next year's model.
WIRED: Elegant space-saving design. Speaker bar produces booming lows and clear highs. Bright 22-inch screen hides smudges and fingerprints. Integrated TV tuner adds living room chops. Blazing connectivity via gigabit Ethernet and integrated 802.11b/g/n. 500-GB hard drive offers plenty of room for media storage. Whisper-quiet operation.
TIRED: Not the smoothest touch-based interface. Handoffs between TouchSmart/Vista programs are slow and awkward. Very limited upgrade options. Midrange GPU puts a damper on hardcore gaming. Retractable bezel feels cheap and rickety. Sluggish processor given its all-in-one class. What? No Blu-ray?
Price/maker: $1,500 (as tested), hp.com
Read our full HP TouchSmart IQ506 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Dubbed the "Boulder," this angular, candy-colored handset is the offspring of the Gadget Lab's crumpled Type-V, Type-S and Type-SL review units. The Boulder isn't another rugged rehash, though. In fact, Casio finally threw a curve by including some fairly useful multimedia features. Welcome additions like music playback, a more powerful (but still lacking) camera, and zippy EV-DO connectivity fatten up this phone's already rock-solid resume. But let's face it -- Casio is extremely late to the party with these commonplace features. Previous pratfalls like the laughably low-res external LCD, and an annoying light show for incoming calls have returned too.
Foibles aside, a lot of the "new" features were actually well integrated into this otherwise hard-knock handset. Tasks like downloading and playing music, mobile messaging and accessing webmail were brisk and painless due to a sensible layout and speedy EV-DO network. Little usability improvements (and smart additions like a waterproof cover for the microSD port) reinforced Casio's obvious commitment to achieving a rugged/user-friendly balance. Casio definitely gets kudos for bringing a tank like the G'zOne into the multimedia era. However, the Boulder is more a patchwork of desirable features, rather than a cohesive marriage of entertainment and durability.
WIRED: Armored cross section where mud meets multimedia. External LCD doubles as wanderlust-friendly e-compass. Awesome camera flash/flashlight combo. Expanded memory via microSD card slot. Solid call quality -- even after 12 rounds of tough love. Included cradle doubles as a travel charger. Also comes in "less-flamboyant" black.
TIRED: Terrible speakerphone quality for both voice and music. Far too expensive. Annoying multicolored lights show signals incoming calls. No file sharing via Bluetooth. Lackluster 1.3-MP camera sucks for both stills and video. Sweet angles still can't hide a brick-ish profile.
Price/maker: $130 (after $50 rebate), Verizon
Read our full Casio G'zOne Boulder review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Out of the box and straight up to the eye you'll immediately enjoy the D3's spacious and bright viewfinder. The noticeably improved 51-point auto focus system is whip-fast and works in concert with an outstanding 1005-pixel metering sensor that gets it right in the most challenging lighting. Images are beautifully consistent with a wide dynamic range and improved noise-reduction settings that give the pictures a more natural look. To achieve that end, Nikon pulled back on the sharpening levels, leaving the choice of added "crunchiness" to a photographer's post-production predilections.
Nikon's new three-inch high-res LCD is a revelation. If you do take the plunge, be ready to spend a good chunk of time learning the feature set to exploit the D3's capabilities. From resolution to speed, color control, bit-depth and so much more, the D3 is incredibly customizable. Dial it in for lightning-quick 11-fps sports action, superlow-light shooting (ISO up to 25600), handheld or tripod-mounted live view -- you name it, whatever and however you want to shoot, the D3 does it exceptionally well.
WIRED: High ISO shooting is fantastic with relatively low noise at settings up to ISO 3200 and beyond. Live view function the best of the top-end DSLRs. Dual CF card capability.
TIRED: So many functions it could take a lifetime to learn them all. No in-camera dust-reduction system.
Price/maker: $5,000 (body only), Nikon
Read our full Nikon D3 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The U110 ultralight we received looks striking, with a scarlet paisley-etched aluminum lid paired with a shiny jet-black keyboard area. As soon as you open it up and power it on, you come face to face with one of the U110's most interesting yet unsettling features: VeriFace recognition. After booting up, the webcam embedded in the bezel starts scanning the room. When it finds you, it superimposes disturbing cross hairs on your eyes in an attempt to recognize you and unlock the PC. If you haven't registered your peepers, the system will hang, so you have to shut it down, turn the notebook away and open it up again to get it to boot.
The 11.1-inch display is bright and sharp, though it can look a bit iridescent at close range. The glossy black keys are big and square but the thin membrane beneath the keys is flimsy and deforms as you type. There is a decent set of ports, but the designers couldn't find room for an optical drive. Seriously, we're pretty disappointed. The included external DVD drive looks cool, but you know what would be even cooler? Not needing an external drive at all. For work purposes, the Lenovo is a capable little machine. The U110 excelled in our PCMark tests, far outdistancing most other ultralights. Overall this is a good PC; it just has a few annoyances.
WIRED: Charming good looks will attract the Lenovo faithful who are sick of looking funerary. Excellent business performance will silence office critics of your "red PC (Harumph!)." Delightfully light and slim.
TIRED: The keyboard, though pretty, is pretty flimsy. Terminator-style face recognition will give you the heebie-jeebies and make you torch all your Schwarzenegger flicks (Especially Batman and Robin). External DVD means one more gadget to tote.
Price/maker: $1,800 (as tested), Lenovo
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad U110 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Dishing out a hefty helping of HD, the SR12 is a lot of camera, both in your hand and under the hood with its 120-GB hard drive. The upgraded CMOS sensor and Bionz image processor have significantly improved image quality and stomped out even more noise. Sony’s face-detection system, which works snappily for video and the 10.2-megapixel stills, is very effective both up close and at long range. OK, so it makes great video, but what about the controls? For those who fly on manual, the Cam Control Dial is like piloting an F22. Neatly nestled next to the lens, the silver nubbin is a twisty-twirly festival of videographic functionality, providing quick access to manual adjustments of exposure, focus, white balance and aperture.
There’s also an “easy” button on board. A quick tap on the little blue button and all you’ve got to do is point the camera in the right direction to get the good stuff. In spite of all this Sony video goodness, the SR12 has one glaring flaw — terribly difficult Mac integration. To get it working you’ve got to have iMovie '08. Previous versions of iMovie don’t have the capability to natively read the AVCHD codec meaning that you had to convert the video to other formats in order to do any post-production.
WIRED: Excellent AVCHD video quality got better this time around. Extra-wide 3.2-inch touchscreen LCD is a big bonus. Outstanding sound quality.
TIRED: Massive internal hard drive makes it somewhat chunky and a bit of a load to carry. The “easy” button should be bigger and easier to find. And it should be red. Yeah red and all glowy.
$1,400, Sony
(Photo by Jackson Lynch for Wired.com)
Read our full Sony HDR-SR12 review.
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: With Kensington's Wireless USB Docking Station, the moment you open your Wireless USB (WUSB)-enabled notebook, all your desktop devices are ready to go. We were amazed at how seamless the process is: The station recognized our 20-inch monitor, wireless USB mouse, keyboard and printer. It was as if they were always connected to the notebook. Of course, there are a few gotchas. WUSB is a new standard and some notebooks can't hook up with this docking station. Dell and Lenovo offer a few models, and other companies should be out the gate by this fall.
With its plain, geeky looks, the 11.4-ounce antenna-topped station could get lost in a field of wireless routers. But that's not quite enough to put our Battlestar boxers in a knot: The Kensington Wireless Docking Station is a snap to set up and makes mobile computing, well, mobile and hassle-free. You know, the way it's supposed to be. —Michael S. Lasky
WIRED: Drop-dead, simple setup and instant wireless connection of all desktop peripherals makes moving a notebook to and from the desk a hassle-free, nothing-to-plug-in experience. Small footprint means no great loss of desktop real estate.
TIRED: Still few WUSB-enabled notebooks on the market. Audio handling could be smoother; default requires USB-powered speakers. First generation device is still pricey.
$230, Kensington
Read our full Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station review.
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: This standard-definition lightweight shoots better video and has a much smarter feature set than most of its competitors. In fact, JVC knows that YouTubers can't bear missing the latest police beating or Matthew McConaughey shirtless in the grocery store, so the MS100 is lightning-quick on start up. The 35x optical zoom allows you to capture the crushing blows and bothersome blemishes while keeping a safe distance. Plus, the nifty laser-touch LCD makes you feel like a real cinematographer with speedy access to manual features.
While it's nicely appointed, you've got to bridle at a couple things. First, there's no optical image stabilization. But shaky image stabilization aside, the very nature of this camcorder calls into question its usefulness. While neither big nor expensive, there are other, better, ultrasimple run-and-gun camcorders out there. Most are smaller and cheaper, too. With this form factor at this price, the MS100 is kind of stuck in the middle between the svelte flash-based AVCHD camcorders and the shirt-pocket shooters from Flip, Kodak and Creative.
WIRED: 35x optical zoom brings the action right to your doorstep. Superb video quality. Formula 1 start-up speed. Easy to use laser-touch LCD.
TIRED: No optical image stabilization. Lack of Mac compatibility is inexcusable and utterly perplexing. Three hundred and fifty bones for a camera that's made to record for YouTube? The Flip Mino does the same thing for about half the cost.
$350, JVC
(Photo: Jackson Lynch/Wired.com)
Read our full JVC Everio GZ-MS100 review.
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: Through some loophole, wormhole or deal with the devil, Gateway has produced a massive desktop replacement that's fast, good and cheap. How fast, you ask? Fast enough to go toe-to-toe with -- and school -- a $4,800 Alienware Area 51 m15x: In our Quake 4 test, the Gateway posted a score of 167.8 fps to the m15x's 167.2. This is partially because the Gateway's 512-MB Nvidia Geforce 9800M is running the show. The FX also has Olympic endurance for larger-class notebooks, going 2 hours, 23 minutes to play a DVD.
And that brings us to the cheap part. The Gateway is just $1,400 -- more than three times less than the Alienware and hundreds (and more hundreds) less than most other desktop replacement machines. Sure, it lacks the latest processor (it's got a 2.27-GHz Core Duo), but it has a whopping 4 GB of RAM to help it attack processing tasks and a spacious 200 GB of drive space for your stuff. The big bummer here is the missing Blu-ray drive, which is what is likely keeping this thing so affordable.
WIRED: Some of the best gaming performance ever recorded on a PC. Long battery life for a desktop replacement. Comfy and solid keyboard withstands heavy hands. Multimedia controls and slide volume look cool without glowing too brightly.
TIRED: No Blu-ray is a letdown for HD-heads, and you can't configure your PC to include the drive. The battery sticks out a bit in the back, and the power brick is monstrous. Power lights on the front, unlike the multimedia controls, are too bright.
Price/maker: $1,400 (as tested), Gateway
Read our full Gateway P-7811FX Notebook review.
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