The Geek Church

Thought we would start with a little retro look from 1980 to 2010.

This is Textie, a texting app for the iPhone.

The Hanvon B10 Touchpad has been delayed.

Darth Vader has been doing some things for DoCoMo. He’s asking who is my boss, for some odd reason.

The Kobo e-reader is ready to ship.

Here’s another game that uses the iPad and iPhone, the Padracer.

The Lala Music Streaming Service is closing down.

The Microsoft Courier may have been killed.

Speaking of discontinued items, the HP Slate could be canceled.

And here’s a simple phone from Samsung with the Stride.

Check out Denon’s new receiver, the AVR-391, which can be purchased for a low price.

I’ve been hearing that the Samsung BD-UP5000 has some firmware issues, like it won’t play Avatar.

The Black Nintendo Wii is coming to the United States soon.

Dreamvision introduces three new projectors.

Here’s some deals for the day. The Kodak PlaySport HD for sale on Amazon and the Kodak Zx1 for sale at eCost.

Director James Cameron is designing a camera for the Mars Rover.

Here is the Acadalus CPS-H1 self-leveling camera head.

Cyberwalk Omni-directional treadmill lets you walk any way you want.

Great disasters in nature are an unfortunate part of life on Earth and various relief efforts are made by governments, organizations and individuals to help those in need. Of course, New Orleans is still feeling long-term effects since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Furthermore, there are also the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile earlier this year and relief efforts are currently in progress to help survivors of these tragic events. Now, engineers from BP are proposing a possible solution to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Their idea is to construct an enormous, underwater dome that would be placed over the spill to stop the further spread of oil and provide an opportunity for the spilled oil to be sucked up later. According to the Wall Street Journal, BP hopes to have this dome built and put in place within two weeks. However, a similar attempt to stop an oil spill with an underwater dome was made in 1979 after the great spill at the Ixtoc well off the coast of Mexico. Unfortunately, this effort ended in failure because the dome couldn’t withstand the damage inflicted by rough seas and the project was inevitably discontinued.

Nonetheless, smaller oil spills have been handled through the use of an underwater dome, though the builders of those domes weren’t facing a underwater depth of five thousand feet like the BP engineers are confronted with now. Sadly, time may be running out in this situation. Even if these engineers succeed in executing their plan, it might not be in time to stop the spread of oil to the coast, which is predicted to occur in a matter of days. So, actually stopping this oil spill entirely would be nothing short of a miracle. Personally, I hope the BP engineers or someone else can find a way.

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We live in a world where any person can suddenly become the victim of violent crime without warning at any time. For example, a citizen walking home at night could be attacked, brutally beaten or even killed on the street by aggressive assailants who chose their target at random for any reason based on their intentions at the time. Perhaps an even greater problem than the existence of violent crime itself is the fact that other citizens commonly stand by apathetically or walk away and do nothing to help the victim due to their own fear of being hurt. Well, in the Netherlands, a interactive billboard using augmented reality technology was developed to confront the problem of apathy toward violent crime.

Apparently, the issue of public service employees like paramedics being attacked on the street is a real problem in the Netherlands. So, the augmented reality billboard was created as a method to raise public awareness of the problem and encourage people to take action by helping victims of violence. Currently, the interactive billboard is being used in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The billboard itself works by continuously playing the scene of a staged, relentless attack by assailants on a paramedic worker. The billboard’s screen is split up into sections and this depicted scene with the paramedic under attack takes up most of the screen space. Then regular people who happen to pass by the billboard are actually filmed right on the street and the live footage of their reaction or ignorance to the billboard is captured and displayed for themselves and others to see on a smaller section of screen on the top upper part of the board. Thus, real citizens are being filmed in real-time on one part of the billboard’s screen while the staged attack scene continues to play on the other part of the screen. This was done to give onlookers the sense that they are involved in the staged attack scene and confronts them directly with the issue of being apathetic in such a situation. The billboard uses a layer of previously recorded blue screen film to make this unique presentation possible.

Then four practical tips are offered to the onlooking citizens on the street as they continue to watch the billboard. According to the billboard, people in a violent crime situation should ask others for help and speak out about the problem, call 112 during such an attack, stay with the victim and make photos for the police while being willing to file a report of the event. Furthermore, the slogan for this project is “You Hold The Key To Greater Safety On The Streets”. It seems that this augmented reality billboard could serve as a real wake-up to people about the grave immorality of being apathetic to violent crime victims. These people in the Netherlands could really be on to something here. Personally, I think we definitely need this special billboard in the United States as well.

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We’ll start with this Puppet Pouch, a cute Nintendo DS cover.

Here is Skyfire 2.0 for Android.

Here’s Chopper 2, an iPad game that uses the iPhone or iPod Touch as a controller.

This is the Booken Cybook Opus e-book Reader.

Here is an iPhone 4G clone.

This is an iPad case designed by Louis Vutton.

We’ve been discussing the Gizmodo/iPhone 4G controversy for a while, and Jon Stewart had something to say about it. See what he had to say here.

Apple has acquired the company Siri.

Speaking of acquisitions, HP has acquired Palm for 1.2 billion.

Vizio is working on a low-priced Blu-ray Player with a VBR200W.

Sony is bringing Android and Intel chips to their TVs.

Amazon has a cool deal with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX1/H.

Here’s a terrific video taken with a normal Nokia N8 cellular phone.

Polaroid 300 does the instant photo printing.

This is the BenQ E1260 HDR camera.

This is the HICE Hydrogen-powered vehicle, made by high schoolers, actually.

Lastly, McGill University has created a haptic floor. Read the article here to find out what that is.

In the ongoing search for better sources of available energy, researchers not only try to develop alternative forms of power but also look for alternatives to conventional power plants. Besides electrical and nuclear power plants, some energy facilities are designed to generate hydro power instead. Thus, a Danish company called Floating Power Plant is developing their prototype for a nautical power plant, which generates hydro and wind power.

They call their creation the Poseidon 37. It was designed to have the durability of an oil rig and the capability to generate up to fifty gigawatts of hydro and wind power per year. According to its design, the Poseidon is 230 meters in length and will have a weight of 30,000 tons, giving it the proper size, weight and elevation to withstand tempests on the water and make effective energy production possible. The Danish company also plans to include three 1.5-2 megawatt turbines or one 5 megawatt turbine in the completion of this floating power plant.

Currently, Floating Power Plant expects the energy cost for their creation to be eleven cents per kilowatt hour. Sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it? Furthermore, Poseidon 37 represents the creation of a more environment-friendly power plant as well. Perhaps, it will be an effective, seaworthy alternative to conventional power plants if it fully comes to fruition.

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In today’s society, researchers and scientists continue to look for alternative sources of energy that are more environment-friendly than oil, coal and natural gas. Common options for other power sources include electricity, solar energy and wind power. However, wind power may have been an unrated alternative energy source in America since countries like Europe and Asia have used offshore wind farms for a while unlike the United States. But now the U.S. federal government has approved the launch of a project to provide the United States with its very own offshore wind farm.

For this project, a twenty-five mile, one hundred and thirty turbine farm is to be built and located on the waters five miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Nantuket Sound. Once completed, this wind farm would generate enough power to meet seventy percent of the energy requirement for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantuket. In addition to state and federal government, this project is also supported by Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. However, this alternative energy venture could take years to be fully realized since several groups are strongly opposing it.

Stiff opponents of the U.S. wind farm project include local government groups, the Kennedy family, the coastal Wamponag tribe and numerous environmentalist organizations. Their complaint is that this project would kill the pristine view of the waters, harm the tourism industry and violate tribal rights of Native Americans by obstructing their view of the sunrise in the area. Thus, court battles and financial deals between groups are probably on the way before the U.S. offshore wind farm truly becomes a reality. Nevertheless, the development of wind farms in the United States could provide cleaner and more renewable sources of energy in the long run.

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Apple announces their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Introducing the Snaptu App Store, now available for Beta on AT&T.

Here’s the Lenovo Z460, leaked to the public.

Here’s another tablet with the GBook from Great Wall.

Android can gets two Android developments. Find out what they are here.

In a weird iPhone 4G-ish turn, a Nokia N8 prototype has gone missing.

This is the Zeemote Bluetooth Controller, ready for Android.

Three new apps are available for Zune downloading.

Rumor has it that the Microsoft Kin could be coming to other carriers.

Those iPads 3G are “prepped for shipping”.

Check out this French guy in Hong Kong who climbs a skyscraper.

Here’s an interesting thing, a Post-It Assault Rifle.

Polaroid is apparently making gaming accessories. What is up with that?

Creative Labs Vado HD 4GB is on sale at Amazon.

Lexar has a new 600X 32GB Compact Flash Card.

Check out the Eminent EM7080 hdMEDIA media player.

The world’s largest curved screen has come to a Japanese airport.

It would appear Samsung is working on a Google TV unit.

The use of a power strip is quite common at home and in the office when multiple sockets are needed to keep a group of electrical appliances plugged in for regular use. Of course, such appliances include a desktop computer, printer, fax machine, scanner, television set, microwave or a fan. However, there is a significant drawback to using a regular power strip. The strip itself could suddenly overload and stop working permanently if it gets overwhelmed by a greater use of wattage than it can handle. Furthermore, a person usually can’t determine the current wattage that’s running on a power strip just by looking at the number of appliances plugged in or looking at the strip itself. Nonetheless, a Japanese company called Sanwa has found a solution to this problem.

Sanwa actually created a power strip that comes equipped with a wattage reader. This update to the average power strip comes in the form of a LCD screen on the strip that allows you to keep track of your wattage use. This unique power strip was also designed with a feature that enables you to turn off individual plugs for machines plugged that aren’t immediately needed. At all times, the strip shows how much power is being used and it will warn you when the wattage is approaching 1,500W, though it isn’t clear whether or not this is a danger level or just the load limit of the strip.

Currently, there is no information about the price or availability of this new product for the consumer. Nevertheless, the wattage reader is a nice update to make using power strips safer. Let’s hope all power strips will get this update in the near future.

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In the development of new technology, researchers will eventually conduct a test run of their latest creation to evaluate its overall effectiveness and determine if it is ready for use in the real world. Of course, there are successes and failures in designing experimental technology and researchers don’t always get the results they’re looking for. Things certainly didn’t go as planned for the Air Force when their new aircraft was suddenly missing in action nine minutes after it took flight. Thus, its current location is still unknown.

This new aircraft is called the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2. Its intended purpose is to attack global targets at a speed of Mach 20 and launch conventional weapons against a target anywhere on the planet in one hour. This capability was meant to make it a perfect substitute for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The Falcon was created by Lockheed Martin as part of a DARPA program and it was launched last week on a Minotaur IV rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The plan was to have it splash down in the Pacific Ocean after it finished a flight test of 4,100 miles in just half an hour. But it disappeared after its launch, the Air Force lost all contact with the aerial vessel and it hasn’t been seen since.

According to the preliminary report by DARPA’s Johanna Spangenberg Jones, the Falcon achieved controlled flight within the atmosphere at over Mach 20 before contact with it was lost. Then the telemetry data signal vanished and the vessel went off the grid as “MIA” (Missing In Action). This launch was the Falcon’s first actual flight after previous test runs were performed in wind tunnels and simulations. Despite the new aircraft’s disappearance, another test flight is still scheduled for early 2011. Well, maybe this aerial prototype will eventually turn up or the tech guys in the design department will have to start again at square one.

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FiOS is adding Internet Radio and YouTube.

TiVo has a Wireless N Network Adapter.

Denon has two 3D-ready Bu-Ray players.

Eye-Fi has Geo X2 Wireless Storage Card.

Here’s an RC Helicopter with mounted Canon 7D camera.

I don’t know what Jackie Chan has to do with camera. But the Canon Rebel T2i has a special edition camera devoted to him.

The Samsung Exec comes from US Cellular.

TomTom Go Live 1000 is a new flagship PND.

Here’s a secure USB drive has a combination on it. Meet the Lok-it.

Here’s the University of Tokyo’s concept controller.

SoundHound is an App available for free for the iPhone and iPad.

RIM has announced BlackBerry App World 2.0.

Check out this Future Kitchen that is controlled by text messages.

Here’s this interesting fact. The Nazi’s were working on jet-packs.

Check out this Domestic Transformer turns 344-foot square space into a 24-room house.