All stories about "Technology"

Putting ChaCha's Answer Gremlins to the Test

Here at Gridskipper, we often hear about travel services that sound too good to be true. ChaCha, a recently launched phone and text-based service, falls into that category, at least at first glance. All you have to do is call or text the company with a query -- Scores' closing time on a Saturday, where to find an all-you-can-eat buffet in Birmingham, the origin of the word 'dude'-- and an actual human being will respond to you with the answer in a timely fashion. Oh yeah, and it's all free! So, does it actually work? Judge for yourself after the jump.

Continue reading "Putting ChaCha's Answer Gremlins to the Test"

Italy may soon be home

Italy may soon be home to a whole bunch of unlocked iPhones. According to La Repubblica, a daily in Rome, "Telecom Itlalia has signed a non-exclusive deal to distribute a new, 3-G compatible iPhone" that won't be locked and won't require a two-year contract. [Popular Science]

Rush Hour In the 21st and a Half Century

City streets are getting more clogged and smog-choked than ever. To keep up with urban style mavens and fight back against future gridlock, car makers have recently released some ambitious concepts for city driving. We caught up with Jalopnik editor Ray Wert to take a look at some of the designs that may shape the traffic jams of the next century. After the jump, check out photos and specs for some of the latest urban concept cars.

Continue reading "Rush Hour In the 21st and a Half Century"

Popular Science takes a look

Popular Science takes a look at the somewhat confusingly named eye-Phone. This mobile-phone technology, slated for release sometime in 2009 or 2010, will give "satellite navigation localization services, advanced object recognition, and relevant Internet-retrieved information." In other words, snap a photo of any landmark and eyePhone will identify the image and put countless related fun facts at your fingertips. Follow the link for a how-to video. [via

Google's Guide to Protesting the Olympic Torch

The 2008 Beijing Olympics are still four months away, but they've already started with a bang. Activists who oppose China's occupation of Tibet have been holding huge protests as the Olympic torch makes its customary pre-games lap around the globe. In the past week, the torch toured Paris and London with an entourage of local policemen and Chinese security personnel. In spite of all the guards, protesters forced the torch to be extinguished for the first time in modern Olympic history. If you want to get in on all of the "Free Tibet" fun, the Olympic torch will be stopping in fourteen more cities between tomorrow and April 29th. The good people at Google have made a map showing all of the remaining cities along the torch's route. The tour includes such exciting destinations as San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and the hometown of everyone's favorite despot -- Pyongyang!

There's still plenty of time to plan a trip to go protest the torch in any one of these great urban oases. Protesters get to meet other cute politically involved types and rub elbows with the world-class athletes who carry the torch, all while enjoying the fun of screaming and flinging yourself at angry law enforcement personnel. So why not fly around the world following the Olympic torch and going apeshit? It's all for a good cause. It's kind of like the civil rights movement, with sightseeing instead of big dogs and high-powered hoses.

Tokyo's Robot Fight Club

The 13th ROBO-ONE Tournament was held in Tokyo over the weekend. This twice-yearly event features fighting robots that battle for a $10,000 prize. The machines are all created by amateurs, but they're able to execute surprisingly complex attacks and defensive moves. Most of them also look pretty badass. Reuters has a video of the battles that shows some of the coolest robot warriors, including what looks like a judo version of Optimus Prime, a robotic Geisha girl with deadly fan arms, and my personal favorite, a karate chicken in a Hawaiian shirt. After the jump, check out this amazing footage of these mechanical martial artists in action.

Continue reading "Tokyo's Robot Fight Club"

The TSA's Blogger Bob "came

The TSA's Blogger Bob "came into work one day, browsed the blogosphere and read about the Macbook Air having problems at a checkpoint," so he decided to investigate further. The TSA acquired one of the laptops and x-rayed it. They won't release the x-ray as it's considered "sensitive information." Essentially, the inner workings of the Macbook Air look entirely different from any other laptop since it's uses "a solid state drive instead of a traditional hard drive." [via]

Dubai's Emirates airline is now

Dubai's Emirates airline is now the first carrier to allow cell phones usage during flights. Phones will be permitted once the aircraft has reached a cruising altitude, but passengers won't be allowed to place or receive calls at certain times including during night flights. The first test of in-flight phone service of took place on a recent flight between Dubai and Casablanca, but Emirates says plan on offering airborne cell phone usage on their entire fleet, which flies to more than 60 countries. They also expect to be able accommodate Blackberries and the like. [BBC]

Is This the Next NYC Taxi?

Ford premiered a new design for New York City's fleet of yellow cabs at this week's New York Auto Show. The press release for the Ford Transit Connect Taxi concept says the new cab is "a fresh take on taxis." The updated on/off duty sign sounds pretty cool: it's described as a "space-age looking flat-panel unit, mounted horizontally above the Taxi concept's roof, [that's] lit on all four sides -- green if the cab is available, orange if it's occupied." The taxi also features a boxy shape that allows for lots of passenger and cargo room, and work stations for drivers with in-dash computers that provide GPS navigation and full high speed internet access. One thing the concept cab doesn't have is a hybrid engine. Though Ford outfitted San Francisco and New York with fleets of Hybrid Ford Escape taxis back in 2005, this new model has a standard engine that's already left editors at our auto-crazy sister blog, Jalopnik, wondering if it will still make a good cab in spite of the higher gas mileage.

London's Brick Lane Site for Bizarre Urban Experiment

According to reports (see above) that sound more like the Onion than a real news source, London's Brick Lane may be the center of an unprecedented urban experiment. It seems a study from the directory-assistance company 118118 found that "one in ten of us has got ourselves a bruise a fracture, or some injury because of walking and texting in the last year." And London's curry mecca, a.k.a. Brick Lane, is one of the most common places to do so. Rather than let people's obsessive tech affairs teach them a lesson about texting in inappropriate places (and that includes when sitting across from someone while sharing a meal), the British charity Living Streets is working to pad any potentially dangerous lamp posts, mailboxes, etc. Whether or not the war for padded walkways will make its way to other urban environments remains to be seen. [via]

The powers that be at

The powers that be at Denver International Airport don't want you doing anything naughty on their Internet, so they've placed restrictions on the airport's free Wi-Fi network that resemble "software filters employed by the repressive regimes of Sudan and Kuwait." You'd think Denver fliers would be happy to have free net access, since in most other airports Wi-Fi costs money, but DIA's definition of bad behavior is broad enough to include checking sports scores, enjoying Dominick Dunne's latest dispatch from the inner sanctums of WASPdom, and browsing through Perez Hilton's crappy pop music picks. The airport's web filter blocks access to many mainstream sites that it deems "provocative," including Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, and PerezHilton.com. The stores in the airport sell some of the very magazines whose sites are blocked -- along with porno mags, so it's safe to say the digital censorship in Denver probably stems from the airport bigwigs' desire to have you buy your reading material from them rather than any genuine concern over salacious online content. [via]

"There are some thieves who

"There are some thieves who make their living in airports. People think I am an alarmist; the fact is these people are out there and there are ways to protect yourself, even when going through an area you think is "secure" such as a TSA check point. Who'd be dumb enough to commit a crime on front of dozens of United States Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, Agents? Skilled thieves, that's who, and they are not that dumb, just skilled and brazen." The photographer who writes Flying with Fish seems to know what he's talking about, and he has a few tips to avoid losing those cameras and iPods. Semi-related: Crime spike? Blame it on iPods. [Knick-Knack]

Slate visited Chelsea's Cafe Grumpy

Slate visited Chelsea's Cafe Grumpy to check out their $11,000 dollar coffee maker, the "Clover." The pricey machine is essentially an automatic French press with precision controls and a five figure price tag. Slate's correspondent says the Clover allowed him to discover the "possibilities of a coffee bean in a way I've never considered before." The jasmine and olive notes that they tasted in the Cafe Grumpy brew convinced them that the Clover's arrival in coffee shops may mark the beginning of an era in which "$10 and $15 cups of recherché coffee" become "increasingly common." Great, now getting my caffeine fix is going to get even more expensive. [Slate]

The Best Sex Shop in Tokyo

Pop Life is a massive six-floor department store located in the heart of Tokyo's Akihabara "Electric Town" that sells every imaginable sexual souvenir. Seriously, there is an entire shelf solely devoted to Hello Kitty vibrators. Along with sex shop standards such as porn DVDs, lube, dildos, and bondage gear, Pop Life stocks a huge selection of sex dolls. The Japanese have made some incredible advances in the fields of simulated sex and realistic, rubberized skin. On the upper floors, they sell costumes for love dolls and living, breathing cosplay and Loligoth enthusiasts. The stairs are lined with autographed Polaroids showing happy female customers enjoying their schoolgirl uniforms, Little Bo Peep dresses, and cheerleader outfits. By far the most amazing items at Pop Life are their wide variety of masturbation robots. Check out a short video of these incredible Japanese pleasure bots in action after the jump (be forewarned this clip contains plastic nudity, so it's sort of NSFW).

Continue reading "The Best Sex Shop in Tokyo"

Meet the RoboPorter: the lazy

Meet the RoboPorter: the lazy man's airport amenity dream-come-true. The latest in machine replacing man, this handy robot that can haul up to 100 pounds to the destination of your choice. Currently housed in Japan's Kitakyushu Airport, RoboPorters are also outfitted with a "virtual assistant" that has a map of the airport and top secret "additional information" (we're rooting for information on flight changes and the closest Cinnabon). Currently, RoboPorters are "only programmed to head off to airport locations for taxis buses and cars, but, as the tests progress the porters will no doubt learn new tricks." [via]

Marriott Hates Porn, Smoking, Fast Cars, and Rainbows

Marriott has announced that it's upgrading all of its US and Canada hotel rooms to HDTV. In theory, this should be very good news. Everybody loves HDTV. Sports fans, movie fans, the kids - especially the kids - all love HDTV. But we're not fooled. This is yet another Marriott attack on American values. First they abolished smoking and embraced hybrids. Now they've gone ahead and done the only thing known to man or beast that can undermine the fine American institution of hotel porn. Given how much money hotels make from spank-o-vision, we demand and expect that several people in the Marriot decision-making hierarchy get very firmly fired.

Marriott rooms plug in to HDTV [Crave]
Marriott rolls out digital entertainment [Breaking Travel News]
Marriott Goes Smokefree, Marlboro Mane Back To Roaming Plains [Gridskipper]
Avert Your Eyes! [Slate]

[Text: Omri Ceren Photo: redbobsled/Flickr]

Previously: Hotel Porn Has Conservatives' Collective Panties In A Bundle, Live Sex in Hotels? A Hard Sell, Oasis Hotel: A Better Place to Stay?, Porn For The Urban Travel Lover, Porn Star Vegas Guides: Stacy

Cingular Offers Travel Guide, Just So You Know How Effed You'll Be

After spending around three hours trying without avail to hook up my stupid Blackberry to Gmail, I did come across this little gem, the Cingular Travel Guide. Don't get too excited, no "Customer Service Call Center's Insider Guide to Mumbai" here, just a nifty functionality that allows you to search for the roaming calling rates around the world. Simply select your desired destination, select your mobile device and view how much you'll be charged to call your girlfriend and tell her, "No baby, I miss you." while you hold two buxom natives in your arms. Suffice to say, the roaming levels might as well be measured on a scale from mild facial humiliation to severe anal rape but who can put a price on a relationship?

Cingular Travel Guide

Note: In Cingular's continued campaign to frustrate its customers, the Travel Guide site is now being improved and all you get is that blobular orange ninja logo. But it should be back up at some point.

Note Again: Now, thankfully, it's back up, like a pain that disappears when you go to the doctor so he thinks you're faking it.

Samsung Allows You To Charge Your iPod (or, Preferably, Samsung Product) Anywhere In New York

Business Travel News Online reports that JFK is getting dozens of mobile charging stations, and that more Port Authority locations are on the way. This begins to reverse the airport blackout trend. About mothereffing time.

More than 50 mobile charging stations are to be installed at John F. Kennedy International Airport this month to allow travelers to power up their cell phones, computers and PDAs free of charge, according to a release by Samsung Mobile and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The stations, which are to be installed in every JFK terminal by the end of January, provide four electrical outlets per station. The initiative was launched by the Port Authority to alleviate increasing demand for electrical outlets during the holiday season... Other Port Authority properties, such as bus and train terminals, are likely targets for expansion.

While they're getting that up and running, here's Gridskipper's guide to not getting blacked out at airports. Next up: universal free Wi-Fi and drink-serving robots. Some day very soon, we will never have to talk to people ever again.

Samsung Provides JFK Travelers With Mobile Recharging [BTNOnline]
Airport Power Blackout [Gridskipper]
Airport Blackout Relief [Gridskipper]

[Text: Omri Ceren Photo: J-Whoah/Flickr]

Previously: The Best Airports for Business Travelers, Smokes on a Plane, Mixing Business, Pleasure and Naked Forecasters, Wifi Cafes in London with Hot PIxxx, Free New Orleans WiFi = Homeless Cops

Live Sex in Hotels? A Hard Sell

Jumping into the fray and temptation for puerile puns, the NYT's Technology section (the least sexed writers for the Times other than the Week in Reviewers) features an article debating the potential future availability of live sex shows on hotel pay-per-view.

Gregory Clayman, the owner of the live-action company Video Secrets, predicted that the industry would soon be selling not just videos on demand in mainstream hotels, but images of people having sex live over the hotels' entertainment systems. "We feel that live, right now, is coming of age," Mr. Clayman said.

Other, some might say wiser heads, be cock-blocking. "Anne Taulane, managing editor of Lodging magazine, who has written about the ways hotel chains require sex films to be edited and about groups that oppose any such films, expressed doubt that the major hotel chains would ever go along. "That would be a hard sell to the big hotel companies," she said in a telephone interview." Us? We're just excited at the prospect of massive sexual industrial complexes, filled with couples, trios, and quartets coupling in a frantic effort to keep up with demand. They'd be all over, boning in the kitchen, in the basement, on the sofa, and yes, even on the television.

Is Live Sex On-Demand Coming to Hotel Room TVs? [NYT]
Hotel Porn Has Conservative Panties in A Bundle

Previously: Porn for the Urban Travel Lover, Porn Star Guides: Vegas

Hotels of Tomorrow Look Like Hotels of Today Plus CGI

Hotel Chatter takes a look at the Hotels of Tomorrow and comes up with the same conclusion as we do: Booooo-ring. Some of the amenities include better security in new key technology. There's a robot butler named Botler. One interesting development, and one that has already begun, is loft "lifestyle" hotels like Nylo and aloft. One hopes, in fact beseeches, that they're not so futuristic as above. It's so 2011 in a 90s way.

Hotels of Tomorrow [Hotel Business]

[Photo: HotelChatter]

Previously: Aloft Opens With Ben Folds

Great Way to Waste Your Half-Life

MRPG's and the technology that drives them remain shrouded in a mist of ones and zeros to me but I can at least appreciate the results, like this video. What you're seeing is a virtual tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania using the same technology created to build virtual cities in the game Half-Life and Half-Life 2. While FLW's Fallingwater is breathtaking, equally breathtaking are the urban landscapes completely constructed online, like City 17 for example. The city is loosely based, many believe, on Sofia, Bulgaria and is full of "pre-World War II neoclassicism." Visiting City 17 is a dangerous venture, you'll most definitely be shot at; visiting Fallingwater is much safer though more difficult (unless you live in rural PA in which case, what are you doing reading this blog?) but visiting Fallingwater virtually, is both safe and easy.

Fallingwater Half-Life 2 [via Digitalurban.blogspot via City Of Sound]

Previously: FLW in LA, FLW in Tokyo, FLW in NYC, The Games People Play, A Great Wayt to Waste Your Whole Life

Arcade Card Battles

What's the big thing right now in Tokyo arcades? It's all about interactive card battling systems, where companies have managed to create a mix of arcade and collectible card games, which makes it that much easier for them to get to every last penny in your wallet. Although they do come in a few different genres, one of the bigger ones is based on the Gundam anime universe, and has you battling giant mechs (piloted or remote-controlled limbed vehicles, obviously), with smart cards -- that you place on a sensor table -- representing all of the weapons you can equip. Another game, based on China's three kingdoms era, has players moving their cards around, in accordance with the movements of the cards/troops on screen. No need to actually learn how to play these to enjoy the fun, just go in any of the bigger arcades in the city and take in the show, where all the action is projected on giant displays (as seen in the above image). For more info on the phenomenon, read Brad Stone's recent piece for Newsweek covering this new arcade addiction.

[Text + Photo: Jean Snow]

Previously: Jet Set Leger, Shaven Ice, Oh So Nice, Sexy Shibuya, mYwaY by Trico, Quatre Cafe, Dorito Wars: USA 0 Japan 1, I Saw the Sign (Cafe) and It Opened Up My Eyes

Non-Geographic Maps from Smarty Pants University

Oh yeah Princeton? You think you're so smart you can make maps without geography, do you? Welll I'd like to see you try. Oh, what's that? You have. Oh. [Awkward pause] Those are pretty cool. Yeah, good job. Sorry I was so aggressive back there. I guess I just fear change. Princeton's Intenational Network's Archive put together these non-geographic maps which seek to chart knowledge not in terms of land-distance but in terms of international networks, in this case, travel times. Thus, for instance, Kisangani, Congo is much farther away from Cape Town than New York City (though geographically it is not so) because while it takes only 22 hours to get from Capetown to NYC by plane, it takes 59 to get to the Congo (fly from Cape Town to Nairobi, to Entebbe, Uganda, take a bus to Kisangani). Putzing around the site, you'll find it is strangely humorous for being an an outgrowth of an institute of higher learning (the trip to Sydney includes "Walk to beach. Surf"). But it definitely includes enough graphics and diversions to keep even the brightest minds occupied for a few moments.

Non Geographic Maps [INA]

Previously: NYC Through Time Map Great Way To Waste Time in NYC, Mashups We'd Like To See, Geowalks: Know More, Move Less, London's Quietest Places, Strip Club Map, Google Earth in Google Maps

Atlas My Love Has Come Along

Fresh Logic's Atlas is a sweet application, harnessing Ye Olde Google Map technology coupled with sleek design. What does this mean for you? Click on a gleaming 3-D icon, say, Events, for example, type in a zipcode and all the events (at least all those events listed on eventful.com) will show up as numbered markers on a Google Map. The events are, sadly, not exactly "happenings." A search for my area code, 10002, arguably one of the "hipper" locales turned up mostly Senior meetups. Not that I'm not saying old people are bad, necessarily, just that, well, they remind me of death. Other services offered by the Fresh Logic Atlas include gas prices, a blog search, wifi, and most promisingly, a well-thought out search function. The application was designed by Fresh Logic, a group of computer scientists who, in their own words, are "breaking all the rules" by creating simple elegant applications. You get down with your bad self, Fresh Logic!

Fresh Logic Atlas

Previously: Williamsburg is the New Midtown, San Fran Tran Map, Farmer's Market Mashup, Boston T Party, File Under Mashups We'd Like to See

PodBop: All The City's Music on One iPod

Podbop is a simple and simply genius website that allows you to download as a podcast a whole city's musical scene. What does this mean? It means a schedule of upcoming shows, mp3s of the bands playing and details for each show (date, time, opener) downloaded onto your iPod. The list of things this renders obsolete would be exhaustive: endless paging through music listings, missing your favorite bands due to ignorance, that annoying friend you have who you only keep around because they know of good shows. And if I sound unexcited about this it is only because I'm trying extra hard not to freak out at how awesome it is. But it is awesome, sweet Jesus, is it awesome.

Podbop

Previously: Kubik is Cool ³, London Underground Music Video, Warsaw Bebop, Hotel Music Reviews, Detroit's Magic Stick

Aloft Hotel in Second Life, Duran Duran follows

Aloft Hotels, the subdivision of Starwood that is trying to be cool, took one step towards victory this week with its announcement that it was opening an aloft in Second Life, the massive online multi-player game. Though the hotels don't make their "first life" debut until next year, Second Life players will be able to check out the "loft like" living next month. Dorky? Yes. Brilliant? Maybe. Not only does the move build buzz among the 370,000 Second Lifers who inhabit the virtual world but it excites the countless other geeks in the real world who feel touched by the outreach. Additionally, guests will no doubt have to pay to stay and with 250 Lindens (the game's currency) equal to a dollar, aloft can make some real money. The hotel isn't the first business to venture into the virtual world. Dov Charney, proprietor of American Apparel and all-round perv, recently opened an American Apparel outlet in the game and Duran Duran just created their own island where they'll play gigs to cyber-thirty somethings, who will bop their virtual heads along to the music.

Aloft Hotels
Virtualaloft [Official blog]
Second Life
Duran Duran Press Release
American Apparel in SL [CNet]

Previously: 7 Star Hotel in Milan Prenatal, The World's Quirkiest Hotels, Welcome to Kiev, Corporate Europe!, San Diego's Keating Hotel, Keys to Gramercy Park in Schragervision