Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland, camera phone pioneer and guy who helped make that Fullpower MotionX-Poker iPhone game is making yet another run at the Pacific Cup, double handing from SF to Hawaii. I took these shots of them leaving the bay this Saturday on a Nikon D300 and you can see the progression from balmy Sausalito sun to foggy, rough, 30-knot bay sailing. And then into the open ocean.

The first two days were tough, and Philippe and Richard have some cuts and bruises to show for the squalls, so email communication has been less than last year when we interviewed him while mid race. Their boat, the Pegasus Open 50, is meant for rough weather, is fully carbon fiber, and has a hydraulic canting keel that adjusts to flatten the boat for more speed. It also has a ballast system that weights the fore and aft of the ship depending on if you're sailing to weather or downwind. This year, because of calmer conditions mid trip in 2007, they've added a larger mast with 20% more sail area for more power. So far, they're getting even less sleep than usual, but are ahead of even the 70 footers with 11 crew. Philippe's a math wiz so the navigation and weather charting come naturally to him. They sleep in between squalls, in 2 hour shifts, or with whatever time they can get. The most recent update says that a school of flying fish swarmed the boat, landing on deck, thinking the Open 50 was a predator. This is quite a different situation than the rich guys who pay for the sailing teams without doing much work.

I took these shots with my new favorite camera, the Nikon D300. In the real world, it costs twice as much as the Canon 40D, so its not the same class, but you have no problem identifying the differences. The color is just so much better, it makes less noise, focuses more confidently and the menu system is much more straight forward. The 3-inch LCD helps but the 18-200 VR glass Nikon lent me is as good as they say it is. You can see how much spray there was, and near the end, my photos are terrible when I'm not focusing past the droplets and fuzzy when I am. I also shot the iPhone review photos with this beauty, at a few minutes after dawn.

The log is below with more details and updates, but check out last year's email interview for more context. [Pegasus]

At Facebook's annual f8 conference this afternoon it was revealed that iPhone app developers will be able to integrate apps with Facebook Connect—in other words, apps will be able to link up to and share data with your Facebook account, so your identity will be consistent and linked across apps through your Facebook account. Think of it like this:

The framework is expected to roll in the fall. As TechCrunch points out, Facebook's iPhone SDK indicates that mobile is a big part of their vision—so expect to see a lot more Facebook on your phone (and other gear) in the near future. Hope you're into oversharing! [TechCrunch]

Samsung has a new slider on the market in Europe and we're hoping it finds its way over here. The i8510 is a S60-powered GSM phone with very fast 3G speeds and Wi-Fi, as well as GPS. What makes this high-end phone lust-worthy, though, is the 8 Megapixel multifunction camera with Xenon flash that can record video at up to 120 frames per second. It also has image stabilization and face recognition as well as other features. Couple that with Bluetooth 2 and 16GB of internal flash storage and you've got a serious, slim phone for T-Mobile users. And it looks really nice, too. [Symbian Guru]

This week's over-the-top I Survived... challenges didn't have as much gadgety goodness as usual, but were strangely satisfying nonetheless. First, Velcro-clad contestants were dangled in front of of a teammate, who would try to pass them Velcro balls to catch. The objective was for the dangler, manipulated by two other contestants, to collect as many balls as possible without getting hit too many times by their opponent, stationed behind a cool pneumatic ball cannon.
Sort of boring, right? Well the second challenge was way better. Fans of MXC (Takeshi's castle, for non-Americans) will recognize the false door game, where contestants have to get through a series of doors, some soft and fake, some real and hard. ISJGS takes it to the next level, forcing contestants to swing - not run - into the doors.

This whole concept of this show depends on humiliating its participants. The producers, though, must have caught on to something more: everyone on this show is pretty annoying. Shrewdly, then, ISJGS smashes them into wooden doors. Thanks, ABC!

Remember that Aurora Feint Puzzle/RPG game that we told you we liked? Turns out we don't like it anymore. In fact, we're actually pretty damn scared of this app, seeing as Apple de-listed them from the App Store due to privacy and security issues. To the developer's credit, they were forthright with what they did and didn't do.

According to their forums, if you opt-in to the community feature, Aurora Feint looks through your contact list, sends it unencrypted to their servers, and matches you up with your friends who are currently playing right now. Great feature, for sure, but that whole looking through our contact list and sending it in plain text to your server is cause for us to go OMGWTFBBQ.

When we discovered that the Apple SDK allowed us to look through your contact list we thought it would be a great idea to automatically show you which friends are playing the game. Why automatically? Well, everyone always complains about the keyboard on the iPhone and how annoying it is to type on it. So we thought, "Hey, why don't we make this feature REALLY easy to use – no typing!" And such, the community feature was born. Some people have said that it would have been ok if we had a better notice explaining what was going on. I agree! We weren't trying to be sneaky about how this worked. It was just overlooked. No one we showed it to even asked a question about it – nor did we. It just simply never came up as a potential issue when we beta tested the game with early users.

Upside is, if you didn't use the community feature, you're OK.

In the 1.0 version of the game we just didn't get around to doing everything we wanted to do in time for the launch: remember we tried to do a high quality game in 10 weeks flat. So, if you opt-in to the community feature, when you refresh your friends, the data is sent unencrypted to our web servers. Before you freak out though, let me explain why this was done. We just thought that it was a cool feature and that we'd implement security stuff if we became popular. To that end, the web server we launched with was a teeny box with almost no power. We spent the first few days scrambling to scale our servers. We really had no idea how popular we were going to be. We added this feature in near the end of our development cycle and simply decided that we didn't have enough time to spend to make it secure in advance of knowing if it was even going to be a hit.

Good intentions by slightly amateur programmers. It's alright. No malice intended. They're actually asking the community as to how they should proceed, and you should go tell them.

It's also a credit to Apple for finding out the mistake and shutting it down. Even though the line about having all apps be vetted through the store in the first place was to make sure all of them are safe, some stuff like this still slipped through because it's pretty much unfeasible to test each application to make sure they're not sending out your private data. Apps and app updates are already delayed for a week or more because Apple's checking them out. [Thanks mjborch1]

iOpener's GPS technology is made so you can take real-time data from an F1 race and use it to race against those same drivers in a video game. By placing combination of Differential GPS and an Inertial Management Unit on a car, it can track its location accurate to 30cm and get the data to gamers in under 5 seconds. iOpener doesn't plan to develop games themselves, but want to make the technology open to developers, and believe the idea could span across other genres, such as biking or snowboarding. [BBC News via Gizmag]

Three of the best mobile browsers that act like grown up ones are Mobile Safari, Skyfire and Opera Mobile 9.5. Even though the latter two (both for Windows Mobile) are still betas, Laptop Mag decided to toss them all into a race anyway, seeing which could deliver piping hot content the fastest. They ran Opera and Skyfire on an AT&T HTC Tilt, so everyone was surfing on the same 3G network with beefy hardware. Spoiler: Skyfire delivered pages in one third of the time it took Safari or Opera. It's because Skyfire cheats.

Unmentioned in Laptop's piece is that the Skyfire browser actually shows you a page that has been pre-crunched by Skyfire's servers, so it's essentially showing you an image. And yeah, since the browser itself isn't doing any heavy lifting, it's going to fly. But stuff like text entry is annoying, since you have to input text, send that back to Skyfire, and then it comes back to you. Flash works the same way, but hey, at least it does flash. We're not really sure what's up with Opera Mobile 9.5 taking twice as long as Safari to render a page, but maybe that's 'cause it's big boned feature packed. [Laptop Mag]

Anyone who's watched to the end of an episode of Lost knows the Bad Robot mascot. You know the little bastard who taunts you with his eyes, saying, "I know exactly how the rest of Lost unfolds, but you're just going to have to wait for it piece by piece, you poor slobs." To commemorate your slow, painful wait, JJ Abrams had these limited edition figurines made in a batch of 500. They're giving away 3 of them at Comic-con this week, where they'll be showing off a pilot of their new show, Fringe. What's cool is that they prototyped these figures in house on the same 3D printer they designed the Cloverfield monster and the new Star Trek movie's phasers on.

Pre-orders for the awesome Aptera electric car opened up last year, but the company has been relatively quiet about their progress as of late. Google's philanthropic arm has just thrown a cool $2.75 million their way, and now they're being a little more forthright: the Aptera Typ-1 is due this year, same specs, at about $30,000. Both full electric and plug-in hybrid flavors will be available. Given electric car startups' propensity for disappointing failure, it's comforting to see this especially promising one get a vote of confidence from Papa Goog. [CNET]

A part of the American Dream is to be able to retire comfortably in your favorite area, say on a lake, with a large home. But not everyone dreams the same, some people love giant water slides, and this family went a little nuts and installed one inside their house for the kids. Not for the adults, mind you, the kids. It's thirty inches in diameter and totals thirty feet long, all indoors. It's built to wrap around the used parts of the house so you'd never notice. This is pretty damn cool and makes me resent my parents even more for never doing anything remotely this cool, ever. [The Craig Caboodle]

Lifehacker covered the web version of PageOnce already, but think of it is as a web portal that displays all your various utility, credit card and shopping accounts in one page for easy glance-ability. This is the exact same thing, except on your iPhone. We love it.

Enter in your logins to your Wells Fargos, your Netflixes, your Comcasts and your Diggs once and you'll be able to check them out on the go. Wondering whether that check cleared? Just tap your bank's name and it'll come up with your account info. Want to know when that movie is due from Blockbuster Online? When your next utility payment is due? Easy.

The only thing we'd potentially worry about is having all your logins and passwords held by one institution, reducing each company's security systems to a single point-of-fault held by Pageonce. On the one hand, the service is supposedly pretty safe and has stuff like 256-bit authentication, and on the other hand, we're too lazy to individually visit each web page when we want to look up stuff. This seems like a win-win. Except when you lose your phone, then it's a mad dash to delete your info from Pageonce. [Pageonce]

I know—Comcast bashing is getting way too easy these days. But its hard to resist when you find out that it took 20 calls and 3 personal visits over five weeks for the company to figure out why Kenneth Bayes, a subscriber in Haymarket VA, could not get service. Then it hit them—they never ran cable to the guy's house. It is just the kind of customer service debacle that Comcast has been blaming on their rapid growth. According to Rick Germano, senior vice president of customer operations, "We are a victim of our own success, to a degree."

Granted, when you experience the kind of growth Comcast has in recent years, I can understand how customer service might drop off. But what happened here was pure ignorance. In fact, it seems that they are going out of their way to irritate their own customers in some cases. So my question is: when will customers start seeing the benefits of the "billions of dollars" Comcast claims to have poured into improving their network, customer service and sales operations? [Washington Post via Fark]

The Fake Steve Jobs blog may be gone (for now) but Dan Lyons has started a blog with a somewhat similar style, expanded topic matter, interesting angles on tech and a Newsweek-themed header. The header still says Namaste, but he hasn't lost that Siooma attitude either. [RealDanLyons]

A tipster mailed in these additional PSP spy shots to go along with the ones we saw yesterday. Assuming this is real, it shows a black PSP with the new PlayStation button, the mic hole, and a thinner outer ring. There's also the headphone jack with the TV out port which features more arrows than before. Color us amazed. If anything, this says that everyone, from Sony themselves to people who have nothing better to do than to make fakes and seed them to news sites online, aren't really expecting much out of the next iteration of the PSP.

With a large enough expansion cards BlackBerries have always been decent media players, but transferring tunes is sort of a pain in the ass. Released today, Media Sync solves this problem, interfacing with your iTunes music collection to automatically transfer selected music and playlists to your BlackBerry. It is currently only available for Windows and doesn't support video or DRMed tracks, but hey, it's a start. [BlackBerry via CrackBerry]

We told you the tiny DelFly II robotic dragonfly spy cam was just the beginning, and we were right. The same Dutch roboticist is now unveiling the DelFly Micro—with a wingspan of just 10cm and a weight of 3.07 grams, it's the first to be smaller than an actual real-life dragonfly. Granted, the dragonfly being used for comparison is Borneo's Tetracanthagyna plagiata, which has a frankly horrifying 20cm wingspan—the largest in the world, no less. But still, now you're even less likely to realize those annoying bugs whizzing around during your protest march are actually just autonomous insectoid ornithopters keeping an eye on you—nothing to worry about. See it take to the air, complete with live eye-in-the-sky video feed, below.

[DelFly via IEEE Spectrum Blog] Thanks, Erico!

The Crunching Dog—a sadly neutered version of the humping dog—is finally on sale. All it takes is $9.99 for you to get a cheap plastic dog to show you that you're worthless because you'll never do as many situps or do them as fast as this crappy toy from Japan. Seriously though, how can something with a dong THAT huge even physically do situps? This is the excuse we're using to justify our own obesity, in case you were wondering. [ThinkGeek]

As we covered in our case for still needing the iPhone app black market, developers are gagged by a non-disclosure agreement that keeps them from talking about actually programming the iPhone with anybody, even though sharing info would help app development. Surprise, developers don't like that. So now we have Fucking NDA, which aggregates their rants and musings, turning them into a single stream of angst about, well, that fucking NDA. Here's a gem collected from Twitterific's Craig Hockenberry:

"There is a huge shortage of iPhone developers. Good thing there are books and classes to get new ones up to speed. Oh right: FUCKING NDA." More seriously, he points out that the NDA, unless lifted, threatens dev conferences like iPhoneDevCamp 2, where they'd get together to obviously talk about programming. The apps are out there, it's silly they still can't they talk about creating them. [Fucking NDA via TUAW]

Zumo thinks they got a peak at the specs for Dell's first cheap mini-laptop on a recent trip to Dell's Texas facilities. They say that it'll be called the Inspiron Mini, contrary to previous reports it'll it's the Dell E. What's supposedly inside sounds reasonable, and what you'd expect out of a suitable Eee killer, especially if it's really only $299.

Zumo says it's got a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM, Intel's 945 Express Graphics chipset, an 8GB SSD, Wi-Fi and a memory card reader, with a 1240x600 resolution screen (that looks a bit off—1024x600 seems more likely). Reportedly, mass production of a Linux model with extra Dell productivity apps starts next month (in time for back to school). It all seems reasonable enough (and a steal for $299 if true), though I wouldn't consider this dipped-in-blood solid, yet. [Zumo]

Professor Tomiki Ikeda, along with his research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a plastic motor that runs on direct light. Unlike solar power, there is no need for storing energy before conversion. The motor can achieve this feat thanks to a plastic compound containing azobenzene which contracts when exposed to ultraviolet light and returns to its original shape when exposed to visible light. By making this material into a belt and wrapping it around two wheels of different sizes, movement can be generated when the larger wheel is exposed to ultraviolet light and the smaller one to visible light.

According to Ikeda, the material is not very efficient at converting light into energy, but he is confident that it will improve in time. He also noted that the material is about 4 times more elastic than human muscle, and it maintained its strength during a test despite contracting and expanding every 7 seconds for 30 hours. He hopes that one day the technology will come of age to the point that we will all be driving around in light-powered plastic automobiles. Maybe—if by "we" he means our grandchildren and great grandchildren. [Pink Tentacle via DVICE]

These Neoneco Swing Speakers from Korea hook onto your iPod nano, classic or touch and provides sound where there was none before. It's not made for any sort of high fidelity sound reproduction, but at a battery life of 10 hours (it's got a separate power source) it provides bare-minimum sound on the go. Grab one from Korea if you really want one, but it is quite good if you want to share YouTube or iPod videos with other people and not get their earwax all over your earbuds. [Neometrokhan via AVING via Wired]

The one major bit out of AT&T's quarterly earnings call is that the iPhone 3G is selling twice as fast as the original iPhone did last summer—in case the unending squiggles of people trailing out of Apple Stores and AT&T shops didn't tip you off. They didn't actually say how many were sold, but we know that worldwide Apple sold a million of them as of nine days ago, just three days after launch. Of course, the hot $199 price—undoubtedly responsible for the phone's brief life on shelves—means AT&T won't actually make money off of it until 2010. You know, when we're on our fourth-gen iPhone. [Alley Insider]

It's funny how technology can really put a wedge between two people in a relationship. That is to say, finding a couple where both parties share a genuine love for gadgets seems pretty rare. This issue is especially problematic when video games are involved. We are constantly hearing stories about how some dude is turning down sex and ignoring his family to play games online. As stupid as all this sounds, I'm willing to bet that it is a major problem with a lot of couples. Plus, gadget obsessions can be tied in with spending excessive amounts of money, which only serves to complicate matters. That having been said, I have to ask: does your partner understand your gadget obsession?

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What you're looking at here is an actual Wii-like 3-D controller interface that can track objects like your hand in real time. It may look a little shoddy, but what's amazing is that this very functional 3-D interface was built by a hobbyist with parts most DIYers can find in their couch cushions—six resistors, aluminum foil, wire, a cardboard box, and an Arduino microprocessor to crunch the numbers. That's it. It couldn't be more simple. But how'd he pull it off?

The rig uses simple RC circuits to sense the distance of an object in relation to a set of capacitive plates (here, the aluminum foil with current running through it). The circuits feed their data to the Arduino, which processes them with builder kylemcdonald's custom Processing code (an open-source graphical programming language), and spits out raw 3-D coordinates that update 10 times per second for each sensor. Just a hint of the amazing things accomplished tinkerers can pull off with hackable microprocessors like the Arduino. [Instructables via Hack-a-Day]

The Gadget: Caps4Stix rubber thumbstick covers for Xbox 360 and PS3. They're meant to add more grip for better precision and control.

The Price: About $2 per pair.

The Verdict: Pretty good! I usually hate this rubbery add-on stuff that fattens up a sleekly designed gadget, but I have to admit, playing both the PS3 and Xbox 360 felt better with the caps than without. The texture isn't just more sticky, it also has a few nubs that support your thumbs as they push the sticks farther off center. (In picture above, left stick is capped, right is normal.) And the covers don't add too much bulk, either, even though the first few minutes of testing were definitely a strange sensation.

So do I play better with the Caps4Stix? No clue. But they aren't just a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. They are more like a subtle improvement on something that you'd never have realized was broken. Like a fix to a carbon monoxide leak if carbon monoxide just burned off a few brain cells instead of killing you.

Now if only you could buy them in a color other than black to match the 360 controller... [Caps4Stix]

The idea of controlling your DVR via your iPhone is nothing new, but this MythTV iPhone remote allows Linux DVR users to get in on the fun of using their phones as visual remotes. It's got a real-time program guide so you can easily set recordings, plus the standard channel and volume buttons to flip around channels with. The only thing we have to complain about is that the UI is fairly ugly and not refined at all, but it's bearable. Unfortunately all of us here use either TiVo or Media Center or the cheap set-top-box provided from our Cable company, so we can't test it out. Let us know how it works for you. [eHomeUpgrade]

How's this sound: rather than hopping on the subway, when in a large city you'd hop into a little pod hanging from an elevated track. It would have pedals. You would then pedal yourself around the city, working up a lovely sweat before you reached your destination. Sound good? No?

Well, thank your lucky stars that the people who run our cities have at least some sense in their heads, because it would be highly doubtful for this to appear in the flesh anytime soon. Even still, designer Geoffrey Barnett built one for his New Zealand adventure park as a proof of concept, hoping to convince people to build them elsewhere.

And while sure, maybe they're fun for racing when you're on vacation in New Zealand, good luck convincing anyone to commute to work in one of these things. No thanks. [Agroventuresvia Gizmag]

I love stupid gimmicks, don't get me wrong. But this cover is one of the worst ideas I've heard from a publication in awhile. Said the editor to the NYTimes: “Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years,” Mr. Granger said. “I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry.” Maybe you should like, invest in putting premium content on your website, or in E-books sold on Amazon instead of spending six figures to design a battery small enough to fit into an magazine cover that will only last 90 days, without any major refreshing of content. They might as well have used one of those hologram stickers found in 25-cent vending machines in the 80's.

This is really slick in some ways—as far as attention goes—but the bigger thing it shows is the terrible lack of understanding that most magazine editors have in dealing with the digital future of their publications. I mean, for Christ's sake, their website has categorized their first two links as "women" and THEN features. This is Esquire!

To me and many others, Esquire is a legendary publication best known for its features and covers, but they've seen better days. (This year they won no national magazine awards.) I remember when I was at Wired, we proudly did a Banksy feature, before he was easy to find and unmasked and all that. Esquire assigned a feature later on, and word is that the writer had the balls to ask the Wired writer for a contact. (He said no.) The Esquire feature ended up being 3000 words about the writer hunting for Banksy by going into a few bars and asking if anyone knew him. There wasn't enough meat to run a front of book piece, let alone a feature. I don't know how this happens. I stopped reading Esquire regularly shortly after that, and even though I flip through my subscription (I get a lot of magazines I end up skimming 'til I find great content), I can't remember the last piece that really blew my mind, nor has there been a cover that had the editorial weight of those from the past, like the one of Ali being shot by arrows after his draft dodging problems.

So, Esquire, I'm glad you're reaching for boldness again, but don't fucking waste your budget on shit like this, trying to get into the Smithsonian with a trick. If you're trying to create a relic, good job. But to make history again, you're going to have to have a clearer understanding of the future of publishing and what your under-30 readers really want from you digitally. In the mean time, enjoy the press.

[NYT]

AT&T's Speech Mashups is a web-based service that will bring voice-activated search to the iPhone, as well as other Edge and 3G handsets. Instead of managing speech recognition on the actual handset, Speech Mashups sends the audio sample to the server, processes it and sends back a text transcription or command to your phone. Unfortunately for iPhone owners, this does not mean voice dialing or speech-to-text app support. Not at all.

AT&T is not currently planning to use this tech to manipulate current iPhone apps (Contacts? Maps? Mail?) but instead will deploy it in web services for a number of net-enabled handsets. This is a somewhat curious choice for AT&T, but it would be difficult to implement system-wide speech recognition without either modifying existing apps or running a (currently disallowed) background service to catch commands. Speech Mashups will be an interesting service for the other handsets it shows up on, but they already have simple voice commands. By building secondary voice capabilities like this for a phone without basic ones, AT&T has inadvertently highlighted one of Apple's most irritating restrictions on iPhone development. [Gadget Lab]

If there is one thing I can't stand it is getting into long-winded conversations with people on the phone. This is especially true if that person happens to be annoying. If I am forced to initiate the call, I find myself muttering a silent prayer that they won't pick up, but the fact of the matter is that annoying people are always available. The good news is that SlyDial has come up with a solution to this problem with a service that allows the caller to go directly to voicemail.

After signing up for the free account, users can choose between the basic free service with a 30 second ad tacked on, or skip the ad with a $.15 charger per individual message (there is also a $4.95 monthly and a $29.95 yearly plan). Then it is a simple matter of dialing 267-SLYDIAL then the number you wish to call. It could actually be a very handy service, although I would imagine that your contacts would catch on after awhile. [SlyDial via Webware via Lifehacker]

According to a rumor that's been getting a little traction on the Mac sites, the new iPod nano will be multi-colored. Notice that we said "nano" and not "nanos." Because while the current nano line is offered in multiple colors, 9to5Mac is claiming that the next nano will have more than one color on each model. In addition, the storage capacity is said to be doubled alongside the inclusion of "new features." [9to5Mac]

Optics junkies at the University of Michigan have found a way to greatly boost the efficiency of OLEDs to produce 60% more light from the same amount of power as those previous, cranking out 70 lumens per watt. Their method uses a layer of five-micrometer-wide lenses mounted on top of a reflective grid, which coaxes the light out from the organic substrate and into the world. OLEDs to date have been held back by efficiency problems—they still can't match CFL bulbs' 90 lumens per watt, but they're getting there. This could mean lighting that adds even less power consumption to OLED's many benefits over compact fluorescents (longer life, better light, theoretical 100% efficiency, etc), and more energy-sipping OLED TV panels down the road. [Technology Review via DVICE]

There are gaming chairs that have speakers and a subwoofer, which are nice and have been done to death, but Gyroxus' gaming chair is a GAMING CHAIR. It's akin to the types of rigs you see in arcades that jiggles you like crazy in sync with whatever racing, flying or shooting game you've just thrown four quarters into.

The Gyroxus costs $479 and works with Xbox 360, Windows, PS3, PS2 and "Nintendo", but neither of the two ordering options list any Nintendo compatibility. If the video after the jump is correct, all it does is lean forward, back, left or right depending on which way you move the center stick. Not only does this seem not all that comfortable, it'd be kind of a pain playing titles like Gears of War 2 on this thing. But racing games, on the other hand, could be phenomenal.

[Gyroxus via Born Rich via Uber Gizmo via Uber Review]

And here she is. After FCC commissioner Johnathan Adelstein withdrew his support today, the vote is now deadlocked and awaiting the yea or nay from Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican who is expected to approve the merger so all of this can finally be over and done with (something tells me a large batch of high-end satellite radio gear is now being priority-overnighted to Taylor's office to make sure everything is greased appropriately). If you're a subscriber, not a whole lot will change once the deal is finalized and the two merge parts of their programming, but you'll need new gear to take full advantage of any new subscriptions once the merger is wrapped up. [WSJ via CrunchGear].

The Gadget: A laptop docking station for your Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro that makes it extremely easy to plug in all your various ports in one easy lever-based motion instead of one by one like some sort of neanderthal. The ports are replicated in the back of the BookEndz so you can always keep your equipment "plugged in." BookEndz has been making docks for Apple laptops for years, and they're the number one search result on Google for "Apple laptop docks" and "MacBook Pro docks", so they're quite definitive.

The Price $299 for 15-inch MacBook Pro, $319 for the 17-inch MacBook Pro, $159 for the 13-inch MacBook, $274 for 15-inch PowerBook G4 and $179 for 12-inch PowerBook G4.

The Verdict: BookEndz does exactly what it advertises it does well. Slide your laptop onto the tray—which is exactly form-fitted for your size laptop—and flip the lever up. The two ends will dock neatly into your laptop's ports in a manner similar to the 2001 Spaceport scene, but without the Blue Danube playing in the background. It's very nice. To de-dock, just turn the lever the other way and all your ports will come ripping out of its sockets like Phil Hartman in the SNL all-drug Olympics.

But what you want to know is if it's worth it for yourself to pay $299 to automate the 60-second activity of finding all your cables and plugging it in. The answer? Maybe. If you're like us and you dock and de-dock your laptop multiple times a day, it's slightly easier to justify the price. If you're only occasionally going to be plugging in your monitor or USB cables, or going to replace your laptop with a newer model in the next couple years, then stick with what you have.

Nevertheless, this is as smooth an implementation of a laptop dock as we've seen. [BookEndz]

The kids over at CrackBerry got their hands on the new Blackberry Kickstart 8220—the first flip phone BlackBerry. And while they have yet to publish a complete review, CrackBerry definitely likes the hardware, claiming that RIM has not cheapened the build quality for its casual audience. But how does it match up to the BlackBerry Pearl? Pretty well, they claim.

...the KickStart has a lot going for it - bigger display, bigger/easier to type on keyboard and most important to some, OS version 4.6. I find the side by side keyboard shots to be almost comical - the KickStart's keyboard makes the Pearl's look like Mini Me in comparison... the KickStart is a more masculine SureType option in the BlackBerry family.

I dunno though, the KickStart is thicker, too, and that SureType keyboard is still inexplicably slanted.

It'll be interesting to see what the critics say when testing is final. [CrackBerry]

If there was a contest for the nerdiest piece of furniture ever made, my money would be on this Periodic coffee table. It has everything a science fanatic could ask for, including the actual elements (even the toxic ones) encased in a thick layer of resin to ensure safety. As a whole, the table is actually quite attractive—and it is sure to be a powerful conversation piece. Unfortunately, that conversation may be internal as your date wonders how she got there and how she can escape without offending you. Available for a whopping $9,500. [Element Displays via Born Rich]

This, my friends, is absolutely shocking. That guy who made himself the laughing stock of the entire internet by getting himself tattooed up with not one, not two, but three Zune logos, has decided to cover up the tattoos. It's not out of shame, however. We've known for a while now that this Adonis has no shame. The reason is much, much better.

I am done. I have had the Zune since day 1 and have noticed little improvement. I have tried my best to support them every step of the way but the recent Xbox Live announcement at E3 made me lose it. To not include Zune Marketplace or the ability to load videos from Xbox Live to your Zune made me finally give up. I am in the works of figuring the best way to get a new tattoo to cover the logo on my arm. Thanks for all the harsh comments and you will see very little of me anymore.

That's right folks, the biggest Zune fan in the world is giving up on his beloved because Microsoft didn't offer Xbox integration.

I really wonder if this guy understood that tattoos were permanent when he got these. I mean, he got them on day one, during the first, unimpressive generation of the Zune's life. It was never a very exciting player out the gate, never offering anything that couldn't be found elsewhere except squirting and the pass, but he saw something there that he was convinced he would be passionate about for the rest of his life. Now, not too far in the future, he's throwing in the towel because he can't load videos on his Zune from his Xbox? Come on dude, you were so into the Zune, but you're giving up over something as silly as that? I thought you were stronger. More stubborn. More stupid. You've really let me down. [ZuneScene]

You actually know what some of the crazy doodles on the side of an HDTV means when it comes to video—720p, 1080i, 1080p. Congrats, you're ahead of most people, like my mother. But do you understand the alphabet soup of audio, the confounding constellation of logos on your Blu-ray player's box? While there are basically two rival home-theater audio encoders—Dolby and DTS—they each have several different quality levels and options for different scenarios. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with, and it annoys us too. So we asked Dolby and DTS to put down their guns for a sec and help us sort it out.

We're assuming you know some of the basics—like that 5.1 audio is five channels of audio positioned at center, front right, front left, back right and back left, and then one subwoofer channel. And that a higher bit rate means more audio data is coming through, which, generally, means it's higher quality and gonna sound better, since you're losing less of the original studio sound.

The building block of digital audio is "pulse code modulation"—an old technology used for CDs and everything since. It can be rendered in several resolutions, from 16-bit stuff on CD to 24-bit on newer DVD and higher-res formats. It can also have varying frequency ranges, typically from 44.1KHz to 96KHz. Without going into more detail, you just need to know that PCM is bulky, and it is this PCM data that both DTS and Dolby work to encode into more manageable files. When audio tracks are decoded in a disc player, they are either sent out analog via multichannel RCA outputs, or they become PCM tracks that any digital receiver can easily interpret.

We're taking you through the major branded audio formats that you'll run into if you're dealing with a home theater, or hell, a Blu-ray player.

First up: Dolby. There are basically three tiers of audio: Dolby TrueHD at the top, then Dolby Digital Plus, then good old Dolby Digital.

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless compression format that is bit-for-bit identical to the studio masters. It can handle a bit rate of up to 18 megabits per second, and support as many as 14 channels of audio, though you're more likely to see it at 7.1. It's actually optional in the Blu-ray spec, but it's supported by the PS3 and most other new Blu-ray players. Some players decode the TrueHD internally, then stream out uncompressed PCM audio through HDMI, while others can send the TrueHD file itself out over HDMI in bitstream for the receiver to decode.

Dolby Digital Plus is the next step down. It still delivers 7.1 audio, but at a max bit rate of 3Mbps. It's a more efficient codec than the original Dolby Digital, and is a mandatory minimum in the Blu-ray 1.1 spec. Dolby Digital Plus can be used for Bonus View picture-in-picture audio tracks on a Blu-ray disc, with the main audio track encoded as TrueHD.

Dolby Digital is the lowest rung, at 5.1 audio channels, running at 448Kbps on DVD (though a richer 640Kbps on Blu-ray, used, again for special features or supplement language tracks).

DTS's offerings follow a similar tiered setup.

DTS-HD Master Audio is at the top. It's a lossless format that is also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master. It supports a bitrate up to 24Mbps (though the average Blu-ray flick's audio is only about 2-3Mbps, with 4-5Mbps spikes) and up to eight channels (like 7.1). (It too, is supported by the PS3.)

DTS High Resolution Audio is below that. It also supports eight channels at a constant bit rate of up to 6Mbps. It's for situations where a studio doesn't want to eat up disc space with a full lossless track (like bonus features or tracks), though DTS told us 95 percent of studios who use DTS use the full HD Mas