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Fake Steve, now with sponsorship
If you have been around the Mac web once or twice then you are most certainly aware of Fake Steve (he invented the friggin' iPod, after all). Not too long ago his Fake Steveness put out a plea: Stevie needed cash to support his fake vegan lifestyle or the blog would have to suffer. Now, I won't lie to you and say we here at TUAW didn't try to get Fake Steve to join us. Negotiations were going well until I pointed out that white might not be the best color for keyboards; Fake Steve certainly isn't fake mercurial. Luckily, it would seem the powers that be at Wired were more successful in navigating the choppy waters of Fake Steve's ways and have agreed to sponsor his blog.Fake Steve assures us that nothing will change, and who am I to disagree?Thanks, Nik.
Message board complaints ruin games
At Wired News, Lore Sjöberg complains about the complainers, dishing out amusing profiles of the MMORPG message-board posters. His eight personality sketches ruin the game for average players, sucking otherwise-satisfied gamers into the jaded world of the complainers. (Alas, we're all too familiar with that world.)We're critical about games because we expect a lot and see so many. You readers likely fall into a similar level of exposure and anticipation. We're often most critical about games that are near perfection; that level of quality amplifies minor issues. But this column reminds us -- at some point -- to overlook the problems and just have fun playing.
Sirius Stiletto 100, sans Bluetooth, sadly
Believe it or not, there are times when you can't believe everything you read on the internets. We know, we're shocked too. One of the latest rumors catching wildfire is that Sirius' new portable radio, the Stiletto 100, will come with Bluetooth. We've done some digging and have found out that it appears that it won't -- or at least Sirius hasn't told anyone that it will. The unconfirmed reporting originated from a piece by Wired News reporter Eliot Van Buskirk, who just told us that his news organization would be soon running a correction. That drops the Stiletto's sex appeal by about a half a notch, no?[Via Orbitcast]
QSST, new supersonic jet, will travel coast-to-coast in two hours
Many of us here at Engadget are, or at least wish we were, the jetsetting type. The type to constantly bounce around to Boston, San Francisco, Hong Kong and other exotic locales. We'd definitely appreciate being able to traverse the continent in two hours, and while our overloads, erm, friendly bosses might appreciate that, our accounting department probably wouldn't. And surely this new generation of supersonic flights, which will reach top speeds of Mach 1.8, aren't going to come cheap. According to Wired News, this new supersonic private jet, called QSST ("quiet supersonic travel") is in production by Lockheed Martin. The new jet sports a "patented inverted V-tail", which will reduce the sound of its sonic boom to less than a hundredth of the original Concorde, one of the reasons why it was met with limited success in the US. The QSST's current price tag of $80 million is still cheap by comparison to the first generation of Concorde jets, which cost $46 million in 1977 (nearly $150 million in 2005 dollars when adjusted for inflation). So save your pennies, kids, we'll be saving ours.
