Posts with tag smart
Engadget Podcast 115 - 10.24.2008

Update: It looks like the Podcast is back up in iTunes! Thanks to everyone who pinged them, but you can call off the dogs -- and a big thanks to Scott at Apple for making it happen!
Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, and Nilay Patel
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Professor Murder - Dutch Hex
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Kids-on with the SMART Table

Gallery: Smart Table hands-on
SMART pulls the cloth off multitouch table for school kids
Electric Mercedes-Benz coming in 2010
[Via BenzInsider]
Belkin's USB / iPod hubs neatly plug excess desk holes
[Via SciFi]
Electrochromic sunglasses change color on demand
We'll admit, we didn't think MyDo's Bururu vibrating spectacles would be topped anytime soon, and while the University of Washington's smart sunglasses don't snatch the crown outright, they certainly make a solid case. The admittedly gaudy prototype certainly isn't the most attractive eyewear we've ever seen, but researchers are insisting that we focus on the electrochromic material that enables on demand color / tint changing rather than the bulky frames. The film can purportedly alter its transparency depending on the electric current that flows through it, essentially giving athletes and motorists an easy way to instantly adjust the level of reflection and tint depending on the ever-changing circumstances around them. Touted as "more active and more intelligent" that existing specs, this watch-battery-powered device allows the wearer to alter the shade by simply spinning a wee dial on the arm, and while we wish we could tell you that U-Dub's swank new specs would be arriving before the bright summer rays, it'll be quite "a few years" before these hit commercialization.[Via Primidi]
Massive Google hard drive survey turns up very interesting things
When your server farm is in the hundreds of thousands and you're using cheap, off-the-shelf hard drives as your primary means of storage, you've probably got a a pretty damned good data set for looking at the health and failure patterns of hard drives. Google studied a hundred thousand SATA and PATA drives with between 80 and 400GB storage and 5400 to 7200rpm, and while unfortunately they didn't call out specific brands or models that had high failure rates, they did find a few interesting patterns in failing hard drives. One of those we thought was most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags (and that's interesting, of course, because SMART exists solely to survey hard drive health); other notable patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age; failure rates did not correspond to drive usage except in very young and old drives (i.e. heavy data "grinding" is not a significant factor in failure); and there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot. Normally we'd recommend you go on ahead and read the document, but be ready for a seriously academic and scientific analysis. [Warning: PDF link][Via Slashdot, photo by Uwe Hermann]
Switched On: The gist on your wrist
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
Watch maker Fossil was among the first companies to support MSN Direct, the smart objects technology first offered by Microsoft in a number of timepieces. Earlier this year, the company, through its Abacus brand, revisited the technology in its Abacus Smart Watch 2006.
While the watch is still on the bulky side, it's slimmed down a bit and Fossil has used a sloping profile to minimize the watch's girth. In fact, the Abacus 2006 was no thicker than a workaday Seiko men's watch I purchased last year. Other improvements include more memory and the inclusion of a year of MSN Direct service. Abacus offers the watch with a metal band that nicely complements the watch's masculine design for $179, as well as a number of leather straps. Unlike nearly any other consumer product that includes Microsoft software, it has nary a trace of Microsoft branding.
Like all of the MSN Direct watches, the 2006 Abacus uses FM radio technology to communicate updates to the device. After activating the timepiece, you choose content channels from a Microsoft Web site. The content has diversified considerably from when the watch was first launched, but it's still mostly focused on the basics, including a variety of different "faces" -- two of which I found attractive, three more of which were acceptable, and several of which were just hideous.























