Apple – iPad. starting at $499. I’m impressed. the fact that it runs all existing iphone apps is awesome. the custom apps look pretty nice too.

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable – The Oatmeal. bwhahaha.

The Invisible OLED Laptop to End All Laptops – Gizmodo. translucent oled monitors. we really will have minority report screens soon enough.

iVictrola, Walnut – Design Within Reach “Amplification is entirely acoustic – no electricity or batteries required.” now that’s pretty cool.

Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater Lego set. for the architect on your christmas list.

Virtual iPhone Phrasebook Brings Us Closer to the ‘Babel Fish’ | Wired.com. pretty funny video of the guy using the app in Paris.

YouTube – Google Maps Navigation (Beta). those are some pretty cool features. Garmin’s stock took a 20% hit for the trouble.

NEC CRV43: 43-inches of curve on sale July. that is one huge-ass monitor. and it’s only $8000. via pete.

Chris Erwin – Cutting the Cable. a detailed review and how-to for dropping your cable box for a mac mini, plex (very cool looking), and piracy. via josh.

tomato firmware + teksavvy

I installed the MLPPP variant of the Tomato Firmware on my standard Linksys WRT router to get around Bell’s DSL throttling. Although I do enjoy sticking it to Bell, the added bonus is that the Tomato firmware is quite awesome. I thought three features were really worth mentioning: (1) real-time bandwidth graphing (using SVG of all things) along with daily/monthly bandwidth logs, (2) a channel scanner to see if other local routers are on the same channel, (3) you can define quality-of-service priority for different protocols (skype, torrents, web browsing, etc).

On that note, I thought I’d make a quick review of my DSL provider, TekSavvy. I’m on their residential dry-loop plan (which means I don’t have a phone line). I went with the Premium plan because I’m pretty confident I’ll never go over 200G of data in a month. I have a pretty crappy line coming to my house so my connection maxes out at 4Mb but I don’t really download enough large stuff to benefit from some 8Mb cable connection. It’s also pretty darn cheap: $36/month and I got my modem off a guy on craigslist for only $30. I’ve only had to call tech support once but a real person answers the phone and they were quite helpful. So all and all, I think the service has been pretty good for what I pay. Though the think the best part of using TekSavvy is the sheer joy I feel knowing that I’m not giving Rogers any more money. I can’t wait for the day when another telco has the iPhone; I will gladly pay any cancellation fee to be done with them.

Amazon.com: Kindle 2. In the promo photos it kind of looks like a giant greyscale iPod. Still not in Canada though.

Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business | The Onion “There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is”. spot on reporting.

AppleInsider | Boxee takes social networks, web video to Apple TV. kinda like a xbmc project for the appletv. wouldn’t mind having some kind of always-on machine like this in my house.

Canon Digital Learning Center – Sample Video: EOS 5D Mark II. this hd movie was shot with only this canon camera. the quality will literally blow your mind. full 1080p downloads available too. via duarte.

Swype | TechCrunch50 Conference 2008. the speaker’s tone is annoying but this demo is awesome. i want it on my iphone immediately.

HP TouchSmart IQ500 Series PC. kinda cool touchscreen pc. mute your computer first for the demo.

microsoft bluetooth mouse

Ram mentioned on his blog that he’s looking for a “mouse that doesn’t suck“. I started writing a comment in response, realized it was getting really long, and decided I’d just post it here.

I also spent a lot of time looking for a good keyboard and mouse. The keyboard part got easy when Apple launched their latest keyboard but their mouse, the mighty mouse, was just not for me. It’s horrible small, which cramps my hand, and I’m not big on the tiny scroll wheel.

So my requirements was a mouse with bluetooth (i didn’t want a stupid dongle taking up a usb port), rechargeable (i didn’t want to deal with batteries), and preferably as large as possible to fit my hand. This left few options. I went with the Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000 and I’ve been very happy with it. Though oddly expensive at the time ($80 I believe) I managed to get it from the Microsoft Store (thank you Boris) for $50.

Configuring it on OSX Tiger was a real pain in the ass (you had to install it manually as a random bluetooth device) but when I upgraded to OSX Leopard it worked perfectly. The 4th and 5th buttons on it are off to the sides are rest perfectly under your thumb and ring finger. I use those buttons for OSX’s Expose and Spaces, respectively. The one annoying button on the mouse is the scroll wheel. It’s one of those scroll wheels that also has left-right scrolling (which i never use) so using it to click is near impossible (so I never use it).

I use the mouse at home (so not 8 hours a day like at the office) and since November I’ve probably only recharged it a half-dozen times. It comes with a recharging base so I don’t have to deal with batteries which is quite nice. The mouse is also a decent size. I’d still want it bigger but I didn’t any that were.

Basically, if you want a quality rechargable, bluetooth mouse I’d recommend the Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000 (what a terrible product name).

Presenting…Mister Disc!. it’s a portable record player. when i first saw the photo i actually laughed out loud. it’s a miracle audiotechnica is still in business after a product that ridiculous.

Riding Up the Hudson With a Dash GPS On My Dash. it has internet connectivity and sends data to dash so if they ever hit critical mass in a city you’d have pretty killer traffic updates.

Motorola insider tells all about the fall of a technology icon – Engadget. fucking scathing.