February 11th, 2011:
- I’d heard of MEMS vibrational gyroscopes (used in handheld devices to track changes in orientation) but my understanding was a little fuzzy. This essay will fix that. Click to it for the pictures if nothing else! (Thanks to David Stafford for the link.)
- The New York Times Bestseller List now includes ebooks. Bout damned time, doodz.
- Motorola’s Xoom will apparently be released for public sale on February 17. I hope to lay hands on it at Best Buy, but one wonders how many other people will be thronging it that week as well.
- And, of course, while Xoom may arrive early, it won’t be lonely for long.
- One interesting argument for the iPad is all the stuff you can buy for it. The ZaggMate keyboard is striking: When you need a keyboard, you’ve got it. When you don’t need one, it’s not weighing down the gadget and getting in your way.
- Samsung’s Galaxy Tab has sold enough units to attract some accessory action too–including its own version of the ZaggMate. Dare we hope that Xoom will be popular enough to do the same?
- Border’s could file for bankruptcy as early as Monday. All the financials I’ve seen on them are horrendous, and people are starting to compare them with Circuit City. When’s the last time you saw a Circuit City?
- This was evidently a real research project in the mid-60s. It would certainly make it easier to scratch.
- Here’s a gallery of “modern ruins,” which are nothing if not sobering. I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as “creepy.” (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- And that collection led to this one, which edges more toward creepy, and somehow reminded me of walking Mr. Byte in Santa’s Village in Scotts Valley in 1987, amidst feral chickens and strong evidence of squatter inhabitation. (Santa’s Village was later razed and Borland’s HQ built on the site.)
- No, if you want creepy, consider that a town right here in Colorado is one of the few places in the US where funeral pyres are legal. (Thanks to Terry Dullmaier for the link.)
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