Lots of people have expressed disgust at the new Facebook layout, and for a variety of reasons. Some feel it’s a shameless rip-off of twitter, others just think it’s impractical and irritating. Some of these complaints are quite funny. I found this comment on one blog post on this topic:

I just “became a fan” of you on Facebook. But I’ll tell you what I’m not a fan of… The new Facebook layout. It can go swallow some rat poison. IMHO. Of course, I’ve been on Facebook since you used to have to receive an invite from someone else to even be on the thing. So, I guess I’m sort of one-sided on the deal and am un-accepting of the new… But, I don’t have much of choice other than quit using. Naaaaaaah.

Actually, the best response I’ve seen has come from twitter. Someone called Mokokoma commented that “i love the way i hate the new facebook layout – it saves me a lot of time + bandwidth.”

Hilarious. But there’s now a much more serious reason to consider giving social networking sites a miss altogether: the government has plans to try and bring them under the remit of their “intercept modernisation programme” which is already supposed to collate information about email and internet usage.

This has been in the pipeline for a long time; the EU Data Retention Directive which came into being following the June 2005 bombings in London has prompted proposals of this kind for the purposes of monitoring potentially terrorist activity.

Since use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace has rocketed in the past year or so, the Home Office have now decided to include them in the database’s remit.

However you feel about civil liberties and even without getting into the whole ends versus means discussion, it is still slightly strange to think that the government can know things about your electronic correspondence that you didn’t actively tell them. Strange, and worrying.

If it’s any comfort, the database won’t actually store the contents of your messages. Just when and to whom you send them.

That’s acceptable, right?

I came across this idea today. I know the story’s more than a month old, but I still think it’s interesting enought to warrant a post.

The city of Oslo is trialling a scheme whereby 80 of the city’s buses will be run on biomethane from local sewage processing plants.

Apparently the buses (like the one above) only need minor modifications to change from diesel to poo-power.

As far as I can see, there are only two potential problems with this otherwise fantastic innovation. Firstly, are the buses more likely to explode, since they’ll be carrying a big tank of biomethane? And secondly, what on earth is it going to smell like?

But the important thing is that Norway is taking positive and effective action to stick to their target of being carbon neutral by 2050. Maybe instead of just replacing the bendy buses in London with a new Routemaster, Boris might consider introducing someting as good as this?

Terrafugia have successfully tested a flying car!

Admittedly, it only stayed up for 37 seconds, but that’s still really exciting. Along with hover boots and time travel, flying cars are everyone’s dream for the future.

It’s going to cost around $200, 000, and will be on sale by next year. For the moment, let’s forget about the fact that you’ll have to have light aircraft licence to drive it, or what it would cost in fuel, both financially and ecologically. Just revel in a moment of excited discovery.

According to its inventors, it’s not a flying car. It’s a ‘roadable aircraft’. I disagree. It’s clearly a flying car with wings that fold up.

Impressionism for the digital age, using an iPhone and an application you can download for £2.99 ($4.99). The results have, predictably enough, been christened the ‘iSketch’.

Jorge Columbo, illustrator, photgrapher and graphic designer in New York, roams the city capturing its bustle and life on his iPhone.

The Brushes application he uses takes the culture of instant gratification a gadget like the iPhone provides that one step futher: now, not only can you capture an image as a photography, now you can capture it in a way that includes something of your own impressions as well.  Not only that, but the application also registers every finger-stoke you make, and enables you to upload it as a video, which means that the viewer of your sketch can also view the process that created it. You can see how the sketch above came to be here.

I quite like some of his earlier, non-New York efforts as well, like this one:

Have a look at some more of Jorge’s New York iSketches.

Read The Guardian’s take on this new phenomenon.

To see more art created with iPhones, have a look at this gallery.

Today, I came across a picture of this watch:

In these pictures, the time shown is (from left to right) 1:37, 1:43, and 10:13. In case you wanted to know what each of the tiny LEDs signifiy, here’s the official explanation from Japanese manufacturers Tokyoflash:

Hours are presented on the upper screen. The hours three, six, nine and twelve in the same positions as on a clock face. Hours one and two are in between, a combination of lit LEDs show the hour.

Minutes are presented on the center and lower screens. The lower screen shows zero, fifteen, thirty and forty-five minutes in the same position as on a clock face, the LEDs in between show five minutes each. The central screen presents four single minutes, a combination of lit LEDs show the minutes.

The date can be read in a similar way with a second touch of the upper button.

Makes almost no sense to me. This is the Hekowatch, and I can only think that fashion-conscious cryptologists and people who want everyone to know how obtuse their brains are will be buying these.

Anyway, it set me thinking about the innovative ways people have come up with to tell the time in an effort to avoid the tediously conventional analogue face. There’s the straightforward counter-clockwise idea:

Read the rest of this entry »

On the 27th of February, the Greener Gadgets Design Conference will take place in New York. Here, they will announce the winner of the Greener Gadgets Design competition, although it seems a shame to pick between such brilliant concepts.

Stand-out among the nominees is Bulb 2.0, which attempts to combine a modern, attractive aesthetic with an efficient energy saving bulb.

And the RITI printer, which uses coffee or tea dregs instead of ink.

You pour the dregs into the funnel at the top, insert your paper and then it functions just like a traditional printer. Clever, although I’m not entirely convinced it won’t make your print-outs smell funny…

But my absolute favourite, and the one I not only think should win but that I would like to buy in the near future, is  Recompute.

It isn’t just a computer housed in a cardboard box – designer Brenden Macaluso intends to make it a fully sustainable desktop computer by creating a design that has fewer parts, takes less time and labour to produce, and will ultimately be easier to dispose of.

I think it looks fantastic, but my initial concern was with cooling, because I assumed cardboard would heat too quickly and be more likely to catch fire. But apparently it is much more heat resistant than the plastic used at the moment, with with a much higher fire and ignition point — 258°C and 427°C — whereas plastic will start to melt at 120°C.

I can’t wait until they put this into production.

You can see all 50 nominees, and vote for your favourites here. I’ll be updating later in the month on the outcome of the competition.

HT – Laura June at Engadget

I want one of these.

Don’t you think it’s beautiful?