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- What Your Boss Can Learn From Birds and Bees
Are you smarter than a goose? Sure you are — one on one. But when it comes to working efficiently, you and your colleagues can't touch the gaggle. According to author Ken Thompson, geese and other animals that naturally form groups have a lot to teach us about business. In a theory he calls organizational biomimetics, Thompson lays out the principles underlying nature's management strategies. So what can you learn from a bird or an ant? Take a gander.
Ants and Bees
Ants use pheromones to transmit messages about predators. Bees wiggle around to tell their comrades the location of food supplies. Thompson says people, too, could benefit from broadcasting more whole-group communications. While mass emails may seem annoying, one-way bulletins can actually increase group efficiency by giving everyone access to information and letting them decide how best to act on it.Geese
When geese fly in a V, the birds rotate in and out of the lead position. This is both to conserve energy and, according to Thompson, because no single bird has memorized the whole route. Collective leadership is the norm in much of the animal world, he says, though rare for humans. In the context of business, groups with rotating leaders possess greater initiative, resilience, and agility than those led by one executive.Worms
The brain of the tiny C. elegans worm has a mere 302 neurons. It doesn't need any more, because some of those neurons have an exceptional number of interconnectors. Translate this to the workplace: If an issue arises, the best-connected group members can serve as guides and help the team avoid bottlenecking at the top. These "hub" people can also quickly fine-tune strategy when new information comes in.
- Sept. 4, 1957: Short, Unhappy Life of the Edsel
1957: It's E-day, as Ford Motor Company introduces its newest make, the Edsel.
In an industry celebrated for its spectacular failures, the Edsel still takes the cake. Although as mechanically sound as other Ford products, the car was criticized from Day One for being too ugly, too expensive and vastly overhyped.
The 1958 Edsel was intended to be an intermediate-level brand, bridging the gap between the cheaper Fords and pricier Mercurys and Lincolns. The most-affordable Edsel (the Ranger) cost 70 bucks less than Ford's top-end Fairlane, while the most-expensive model (the Citation) cost more than a Mercury Montclair.
In the post-mortem that followed the Edsel's early demise, the faulty pricing structure was cited by Ford as a big reason the car failed. Sales weren't helped, either, by the fact that it rolled out of the plant at the beginning of a recession. But there was more.
The Edsel -- named for Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son who died of cancer in 1943 -- was the subject of an intense marketing blitz while still on the drawing board. The company promised an eager public something revolutionary, carefully baited the hook, and then failed to deliver. The Edsel was just another sedan on the basic Ford chassis.
Well, maybe not just another sedan. The classic barfly standard that everyone is good looking at closing time isn't true in this case. The Edsel was butt-ugly, period. A half century later, it's still butt-ugly.
Almost immediately after E-day, the superhype that had generated so much anticipation boomeranged on Ford. Automotive writers roundly trashed the Edsel, going so far as to compare the oval-shaped vertical grille to the female sex organ -- racy stuff for 1957.
Henry Ford II, who had opposed naming the car after his late father, believing it to be undignified, was no doubt furious and mortified. Robert McNamara, soon to become U.S. secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration, was president of the Ford Motor Company at the time and realized instantly he had a lemon on his hands. (A few years later, he'd be a little slower to realize that he had even a bigger lemon on his hands in a place called Vietnam.)
During the Edsel's first year, 1958, four models were produced and barely more than 63,000 were sold in the United States. Sales dropped in 1959, even though Ford had cut back to just two models, and on Nov. 19, 1959, barely two years after E-day, the company threw in the towel on the Edsel.
In one of those little logic-defying ironies, the Edsel today is a prized collector's item, fetching as much as $200,000 for a rare 1960 convertible.
Another victim of this historic automotive fiasco was the name Edsel itself. Although never a particularly popular boy's name -- rising to 400th on the 1927 list -- Edsel (from the Old German Adal, meaning "noble") has almost entirely vanished.
Source: Time magazine, Failure magazine
- Security Matters: How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity
Let me start off by saying that I'm making this whole thing up.
Imagine you're in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver's license, Social Security card and bank account -- possibly using the identity of someone roughly the same age who died as a young child -- but it's getting harder. And you know that trend will only continue. So you decide to grow your own identities.
Call it "identity farming." You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.
There are some complications, of course. Maybe you need people to sign their name as parents -- or, at least, mothers. Maybe you need to doctors to fill out birth certificates. Maybe you need to fill out paperwork certifying that you're home-schooling these children. You'll certainly want to exercise their financial identity: depositing money into their bank accounts and withdrawing it from ATMs, using their credit cards and paying the bills, and so on. And you'll need to establish some sort of addresses for them, even if it is just a mail drop.
You won't be able to get driver's licenses or photo IDs on their name. That isn't critical, though; in the U.S., more than 20 million adult citizens don't have photo IDs. But other than that, I can't think of any reason why identity farming wouldn't work.
Here's the real question: Do you actually have to show up for any part of your life?
Again, I made this all up. I have no evidence that anyone is actually doing this. It's not something a criminal organization is likely to do; twenty-five years is too distant a payoff horizon. The same logic holds true for terrorist organizations; it's not worth it. It might have been worth it to the KGB -- although perhaps harder to justify after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 -- and might be an attractive option to existing intelligence adversaries like China.
Immortals could also use this trick to self-perpetuate themselves, inventing their own children and gradually assuming their identity, then killing their parents off. They could even show up for their own driver's license photos, wearing a beard as the father and blue spiked hair as the son. I’m told this is a common idea in Highlander fan fiction.
The point isn't to create another movie plot threat, but to point out the central role that data has taken on in our lives. Previously, I've said that we all have a data shadow that follows us around, and that more and more institutions interact with our data shadows instead of with us. We only intersect with our data shadows once in a while -- when we apply for a driver's license or passport, for example -- and those interactions are authenticated by older, less-secure interactions. The rest of the world assumes that our photo IDs glue us to our data shadows, ignoring the rather flimsy connection between us and our plastic cards. (And, no, REAL-ID won't help.)
It seems to me that our data shadows are becoming increasingly distinct from us, almost with a life of their own. What's important now is our shadows; we're secondary. And as our society relies more and more on these shadows, we might even become unnecessary.
Our data shadows can live a perfectly normal life without us.
---
Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT, and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
- Jargon Watch: Voggy, Admixed Embryo, Memristors
Voggy adj. Smoggy weather caused when volcanoes, like Hawaii's active Kilauea, release sulfur dioxide that combines with dust and sunlight.
Admixed embryo n. Legalese for any early-stage embryo combining human and nonhuman genes or tissue. Encompassing both cybrids and chimeras yet sounding less apocalyptic than either, these hybrids are now approved in England for stem cell research.
Memristors n. pl. Resistors with memory — meaning that the resistance changes with fluctuations in electrical charge. If the charge is turned off, the element will remember the last resistance. Hypothesized in 1971 as the fourth basic circuit element (in addition to the resistor, inductor, and capacitor), memristors could make brainlike computing possible. A nanoscale version has finally been built by Hewlett-Packard.
Deep carbon n. Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, stored deep beneath Earth's surface and underwater naturally. It could be released in catastrophic quantities as global warming raises sea temperatures. Typically ignored in climate-change prediction models, deep carbon may have a far bigger impact on our survival than driving SUVs or eating red meat.
— Jonathon Keats jargon@wired.com
- Picasa Upgrade Gives Photo Sharing a Facelift
Picasa upgrades its desktop and online components of photo-aggregation and editing tools. Most notably, Picasa Web Albums now has the ability to identify and filter photos by facial recognition. It's a little creepy, but it gives Google's photo software a leg up on the competition by being the first of its kind.
- Report: Internet Capacity Keeps Pace With Demand
Do not worry about conserving bandwidth: The internet's tubes aren't close to full, a new report finds. Internet capacity grew more than 60 percent in the last year and is growing faster than demand, even in the age of online video.
- 'What the Buck?' Creator Inks Deal With HBO
Michael Buckley will develop new material for the cable channel, with an eye toward content that will work online and off.
- Boston Cabbies Wicked Mad About Green Taxi Rule
Beantown says all taxis must be hybrids by 2015, and cabbies aren't taking too kindly to the news.
- Hands-On With Games of Penny Arcade Expo
First impressions roll in for Wii shooter The Conduit, worthwhile Diablo clone Demigod and a significantly improved Penny Arcade Adventures.
- Got Full Bars? Improve Your Mobile Phone Signal
Dropped calls? Spotty coverage? The first step to overcoming a poor cell signal is to understand why your phone is acting up. We'll give you a quick primer in this how-to. And when common sense fixes fail, it's time to bust out the gadgets.
- Tobacco Could Hold the Key to Revolutionary Gene Therapy
Scientists use a modified tobacco virus to deliver delicate gene therapies into the heart of diseased cells, with the potential to treat most cancers, viruses and genetic disorders.
- Is It So Bad That Bono Does Good?
It's easy to take potshots at wealthy celebrities who endorse causes. After all, what do they know? We tracked down the guy who turned Bono into a political player to find out what makes some celebrity advocacy campaigns work while others flounder.
- Wired.com's Picks From Filminute's Microvideo Short-List
Sci-fi, animation and dinosaurs get the nod in the online film fest's 60-second masterpieces.
- World's Best Hypermilers Going for Another Record
The Lennon and McCartney of hypermiling hope to set a new record for fuel-efficiency during an 8,000-mile trek around the United States.
- Video: Clashes Between Police and RNC Protestors Bubble Up Online
Flash-bangs and teargas and handcuffs, oh my!
- File Sharing Is Hard Habit to Break
Roughly one million people downloaded the season premiere of "Prison Break" from file sharing sites when they could have watched the show legally on either Fox or Hulu sites. The problem is threefold, say analysts: Piracy is habitual, cultural and convenient.
- IPhone Users Report Network Outages; Second 3G Lawsuit Emerges
While Apple's iPhone sales continue to succeed, things just aren't looking any better for AT&T's network woes, and their dysfunctional relationship has given birth to a second lawsuit. Several iPhone users report a complete outage of AT&T's data service. Reports have surfaced in Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and St. Louis; users have claimed in the Apple support forums that a call to AT&T's support line confirms the outage.
- Is Lover Boy a Louse? It May Be Genetic
News from Portfolio.com
We have heard about the God gene and the gay gene -- though each has been met with significant skepticism. Now comes news of a gene that Swedish researchers are touting as a possible biological basis for why some guys won't settle down.
Credit a young researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institute for discovering a link between a variation in the AVPR1A gene -- which has been linked to autism and how people interact socially -- and a propensity for men to skip out on women, or to have marital problems if they do tie the knot.
In a photograph on the Karolinska's website, the researcher, Hasse Walum, looks a little like rocker Kurt Cobain.
Walum did not report if he carries the tell-tale gene, although in a study of 552 sets of twins, all in relationships, Walum found that 40 percent of the men carried the Ramblin' Man variation of this gene.
The couples filled out questionnaires that asked questions such as:
- I feel anxious when someone gets too close.
- Have you ever regretted getting married/moving in?
- Do you kiss your partner?
Researchers then ran genetic screens of the subjects, discovering that a line of code at position 334 in the gene had a statistical correlation with the less committed men.
Women married to men who carry one or two copies of the suspect code were, on average, "less satisfied with their relationship" than were women married to men who didn't carry this code, Walum said.
This same gene has also been linked in a different study to dictatorial behavior, and the hormone, called vasopressin, made by this gene has been found to be plentiful in voles that mate for life.
But before women rush out to test their men for this genetic variation -- or we run DNA screens of John McCain and Barrack Obama to see if they have an autocratic bent hidden in their genes -- we need to realize that these tests are very preliminary statistical links. No one has physiologically linked this genetic variation to behavior in a relationship, or to Stalinistic behavior.
Walum is well aware of this, and pointed out that the effect of the genetic variation is "modest," and cannot be used to predict the future behavior of someone in a relationship.
A caveat that makes one wonder why researchers, institutes, and the media keep trotting out these preliminary associations between genes and profoundly important human behaviors like religion and relationship management in this way.
One reason is that they can be fun, like reading Tarot cards can be fun. These studies can also point scientists in a possible direction towards where to look for serious maladies such as autism, which is what Walum's work is focusing on.
"There are, of course, many reasons why a person might have relationship problems," Walum told the BBC.
Indeed, there are.
- Finally, a Clean Subway Station Bathroom
A Scottish artist known as Travis the Trannyboi so loved New York's DeKalb Avenue subway station that he recreated it. In his bathroom.
- Another Nail in the NebuAd Coffin: CEO Steps Down
Congressional scrutiny in behavioral targeting has yet to claim any victims with regulation, but the bad publicity alone is already causing casualties. Web tracker NebuAd has been bleeding clients since the inquiry began. And now now their CEO, Robert Dykes, has jumped ship to join electronic payment firm Verifone.
- Toyota's Solar Car Carrier
Japan's largest shipping line is spending $1.4 million developing a solar-diesel hybrid cargo ship that will carry new Toyotas to the United States.
- Should Medicare Pay for Genetic Testing?
This may be your last chance to tell the federal government whether Medicare should pay for a cutting-edge personalized medicine service. Last year, the FDA announced that a genetic test might help doctors avoid a common catastrophe -- giving their patients an excessive dose of warfarin. Each year more than 50,000 people taking that drug wind up in the hospital with serious internal bleeding because they've overdosed.
- Wired.com Readers' Best Geek Tattoos
: From DNA to 80 digits (and counting) of pi, Wired.com readers take their geek tattoos pretty seriously.
We asked you to flash your decorated flesh, and you obliged with pictures of some pretty wild skin art. Now it's time for the rest of the world to bask in your dermatological commitment to geekery.
Click through the gallery to see more ink inspired by science, computers and other geek obsessions.
Left:
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Submitted by ShaharPhotographer's comment:
"Comes to show it's that easy to reboot and start over.”
: The Other Half of Rock
Submitted by Aaron SarazanPhotographer's comment:
"My brother and I got matching tattoos. He has a Guitar, with binary that says 'Rock' -- I've got a D20 with 'Roll.'”
: Extra-Large DNA
Submitted by BrandonPhotographer's comment:
"Seven years I've been working on this. Phase 1 is complete."
: Geek 4 Life
Submitted by Christopher HolmokPhotographer's comment:
"I am a GEEK 4 LIFE, SUCKA!!!"
: Pi Tattoo
Submitted by DrewPhotographer's comment:
"Since tattoos were illegal in Oklahoma until only a couple of years ago, my friends and I made a tradition out of annual road trips for tattoos. Every time I can't think of something new, I add some more digits to pi. It's up to 80 digits."
: No More Hunting for Tape Measures
Submitted by Dave SeldenPhotographer's comment:
"As a woodworker-graphic designer, I use a tape measure or ruler almost every day. Now I have one always within arm's reach. I use it for my work, but also my play. I measured some trout for length with it on a fishing trip to Mount Hood this weekend."
: Louder!
Submitted by Ben CaseyPhotographer's comment:
"I always wanted a musical tattoo, and the audio-out icon on my 266-Mhz G3 seemed more appropriate than a G clef.”
:
Bassoon Keywork on My Leg
Submitted by Matthew S.Photographer's comment:
"I was a bassoon major in college, and still play as a hobby. This gets a lot of interest, and many wrong guesses. The only people who have correctly identified it as a bassoon have all been players themselves. John at The Chameleon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, did a fantastic job on the artwork."
: Seattle, Third Avenue, 2004
Submitted by mooargylePhotographer's comment:
"Taken with Nikkormat FT2 (film)."
- Sylvania G — The Little Netbook That Couldn't
In the ever-crowding netbook segment there are some gems. The Asus Eee PC, the MSI Wind and the upcoming Dell Mini Inspiron just to name a few. Then there's Sylvania's G Netbook. This catastrophe is an affront to cheap, reliable computers on virtually every level with its buggy interface, chintzy chassis and crash-prone OS.
- Sept. 3, 1803: Dalton Introduces Atomic Symbols
1803: English chemist-physicist John Dalton starts using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
Dalton, considered the father of modern atomic theory, made a logbook entry that day titled, "Observations on the Ultimate Particles of Bodies and their Combinations." It was the first use of symbols to represent the elements of modern chemistry.
He soon had a table of 21 elements arranged by atomic mass, which he presented in a scientific paper the following month. Eventually, he had 36 different symbols.
In his 1805 work, "A New System of Chemical Philosophy," Dalton propounded the tenets of his atomic theory:
- The chemical elements are made of atoms.
- The atoms of an element are identical in mass.
- Atoms of different elements have different masses.
- Atoms combine only in small, whole-number ratios like 1:1, 1:2, 2:3, etc.
- Atoms can not be created or destroyed.
Dalton's symbols were not the ones we use today, but circles containing distinct symbols (a dot for hydrogen, a cross for sulfur), or circles containing letters (C for copper, L for lead). He used them singly to represent elements and in combination to show compounds.
A decade after Dalton formulated his symbols, Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius simplified the system. Half of Dalton's symbols used letters inside a circle to represent the element. Berzelius organized 47 elements with letters alone, and he based those letters not primarily on the English names, but on the Latin ones. In an era when all Europe's learned men (and the few women who were allowed into schools and universities) knew Latin, the shared language was an international lingua franca.
All but a handful of Berzelius' symbols are still used today. So it's Au for gold and Ag for silver, not the circled G and S of Dalton's original notation.
The simplified notation led the way for English analytical chemist John Newlands to formulate his Law of Octaves and a prototype periodic table of the elements in 1864, but it was Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who really laid it all on the table with 63 elements in 1869. When he flipped his chart to a horizontal table two years later, he created a form much like what you see in chemistry textbooks and on the walls of chem labs today.
Alas, Mendeleev's table was based on atomic mass rather than atomic number, so details like the placement of tellurium and iodine didn't work out. He thought it was a question of inaccurate measurement or other experimental error. It was 1913 before English physicist Henry Moseley reorganized the periodic table by atomic number.
As for Dalton, his name lives on as alternate designation for the atomic mass unit or amu. Microbiologists and biochemists need a convenient measure for large organic molecules. Kilo-u or kilo-amu would be awkward, so a protein molecule might be said to have a mass of 35 kilodaltons, or kDA.
But it's Berzelius' symbols and what they mean that plague first-year chem students: You've got to "get it" before you can do anything else.
Source: History of the Atom, Elementymology
- Mozilla Says: Chrome is Fast, But Not That Fast
Initial reviews of Chrome, released Tuesday, praised Google's browser for its blistering speed. But now that techies have had time to run some speed tests, the naysayers are having their say.
- Alt Text: Ashes to Caches -- Cremation Services for Dead Geeks
I've been contemplating the ever-present specter of death and eternal nothingness, mostly because Warcraft has been getting a little dull lately. I'm not too worried about the disposition of what eternal soul I may or may not possess, but I realize my surviving loved ones will have to deal with the rapidly cooling rest of me.
I've pretty much settled on cremation, because of the efficiency and because the whole pallbearer conversation is so awkward. But then what? I'm just not an urn sort of guy. Those who are into urns, who are part of the urn scene, recognize me when I come in the door and avoid me.
Technology, as always, comes to the rescue. There are so many neat things you can do with the dead, burnt part of yourself these days that mulling over the options is like visiting a death-obsessed Apple Store. Here are just a few of the options available to you, me or anyone mortal.
Portrait
Ashes to Portraits will take your earthly remains, mix them into some paint and paint a picture ... of you! It's like a really sensitive mad scientist. If life were a movie, I'd completely go for this one, because you know you can't get made into a corpse-portrait without something cool happening. You'll come back to terrorize the family that moved into your home, or you'll help a young insecure woman find true love, or maybe you'll just drive someone insane with the staring. There's no bad outcome.
But this is real life, or so I'm told, so I see no reason to be painted into a portrait of me. I'd rather be a painting of a robot version of myself with vibro-claws, earthquake-beam eyes and a nice HD screen.
Space
This is the go-to destination for the rich, accomplished, dead geekish person, thanks to Space Services. Timothy Leary went this route. So did Gene Roddenberry.
I'm not so keen on it myself. Why should my remains get to do something I can't? I'm the one hauling these calcium phosphates around, but after I get hit by a semi or try the pork tartare, they get to go on the trip of a post-lifetime? Let my ashes buy their own freaking ticket if they want to go into low-Earth orbit so much.
Diamond
For those who enjoy jewelry, and the being thereof, LifeGem will infuse your remains into a diamond. Becoming one of the hardest substances known to humanity doesn't sound too bad -- at least I'd finally be in shape. Michael Phelps may have a perfect swimmer's body, but can he scratch chrysoberyl? I think not.
I'd want all my cremains made into diamond, though. No reason to break up the set. That's either a lot of diamonds, or one huge diamond, requiring the assets of a small European country to purchase. All the more reason to get one to install me now as overlord.
Pencils
Yes, you can get your ashes made into a bunch of pencils. I'm not sure if this is commercially available yet, but I don't really care. Who uses pencils? People who are bad at crosswords, that's who. And people taking Scantron tests. Those are not groups I want fondling my remains. I'm sure there are many people who would love nothing more than to spend their post-life being sharpened, but I'm not one of those people.
Fireworks
Of all the services I've covered, the fireworks option is my favorite. My loved ones will be touched to see me reincarnated briefly as a shining work of art in the night sky, and my enemies will enjoy seeing me blow up.
The toughest decision is whether to go for the smiley-face. They can make me into one of those smiley-face fireworks, but do you think they'd be willing to explain to the crowd that I'm being ironic?
- - -
Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a moralizer, a morphologist and a memento mori.
- Souring U.S.-Russia Relations Threaten Space Station
The U.S. ticket on the Russian Soyuz is tied to the Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Agreement, one part of which bans payments to Russia in connection with the ISS (pdf) unless Russia is taking steps to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other weapons technology. A waiver for this part of the agreement runs out in 2011.
- Audio-Enhancing Mini-Amp, New Palm Treo Pro and More
: Need to juice up your desktop music scene? Nuforce has just the thing. Its new Icon is a miniature, multithreat amplifier that can be used to pump music from a computer or audio player to your speakers and headphones. Although it's only 12 watts per channel, the Icon is powerful enough to act as a pre-amp to full-fledged stereos and on its own can drive most bookshelf speakers, producing a wide, spacious sound stage.
The sound quality from the headphone jack on my laptop is thin and distorted, but when I hooked up the Icon via the USB port and patched in my Grado SR80 cans, it was a revelation. The Icon uses a high-quality digital-to-analog converter to convert the computer's digital signal to sweet-sounding analog, and all of a sudden the music was crystal clear, the bass cleaner and deeper, and the overall sound infinitely better. The only downside here may be that you'll realize how crummy some of those downloaded MP3s actually sound. In the end, the beauty of the Icon is that it can be used in so many different ways. I've got it powering some outdoor speakers on my patio -- and it excels wherever you rig it.
WIRED: Sturdy silicon-like stand holds it vertically. Rad design and color choices: red, black, blue, silver. Small enough to take on vacation.
TIRED: Ethernet speaker cables are cutting-edge, but standard banana plugs would be better. Bass can be a touch thin in heavier (rock, hip-hop) music.
Price/maker: $250, Nuforce
Photo: Christopher Jones/Wired.com
Read our full Nuforce Icon Desktop Amplifier review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The Treo Pro sports a shiny, rounded, tuxedo-black exterior and a handful of practical OS "shortcuts." Aside from the industrial iPhone-like design lines, those shortcuts are enough to make even the most die-hard Machead grin and bear Windows Mobile (almost). At the top of our shortcut list are the dedicated WiFi button on the right side and customizable button on the left (ours was set for camera). Circumventing the main menu and tiresome nav made the phone a joy to use. The touchscreen, on the other hand, was far from blissful. Laggy and unresponsive, we found ourselves double- and sometimes triple-tapping -– even with the stylus.
Palm is definitely flexing its once-mighty muscle and trying to say it can build a stylish multimedia device with a touchscreen. But for $550, a touch interface should have more precision than this. We can only hope Palm continues to fine-tune the screen and ditch that archaic stylus permanently.
WIRED: Trim, light and pocketable. Shortcuts prove beyond useful. Decent 2-megapixel pics. MicroUSB Battery lasts almost two full days. 3.5mm headphone jack. PPT/Excel/Word and PDF-reading, of course. Google Maps and TeleNav GPS, which offers turn-by-turn directions plus target searches; e.g., gas stations by price. Ships unlocked.
TIRED: Menu scrolling is about as fluid as a piece of dolomite. Slippery "obsidian" plastic casing retains more fingerprints than the NSA. Noticeable screen glare. Curved design comprised by bottom-side USB/headphone jack that should be recessed more. Bluetooth not included in image send options. Only way to access microSD? Remove battery cover.
Price/maker: $550, Palm
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read our full Palm Treo Pro review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: Look! Hardware that breaks –- on purpose! The Z10's apparent bendy kick-slide design may be flashy, but turning out an innovative design is about the only thing this phone has going for it. Though it's billed as a "pocket-sized mobile studio," this 4-ounce, platinum-trimmed phone is certainly no substitute for even a mediocre minicamcorder (Exhibit A: the Flip Mino). So why drop $500 on the Z10 when you can get a 5-megapixel camphone (Exhibit B: the Nokia N82) that shoots crisper stills and comparable vids? Beats us.
Maybe it's the intuitive editing suite: The Z10's storyboard feature let us cut together a montage of clips and pics with cinematic fades, circle dissolves, music and title cards in less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the OS wasn't nearly as user-friendly. We literally had to break out the instruction manual just to send a Bluetooth pic (no joke). Had Motorola spent even half as much time making the software as innovative as its breakaway hardware, the Z10 would have wowed us. But with its lacking OS and underwhelming camera, the phone didn't feel ready for prime time.
WIRED: 30-fps vid clips don’t look too shabby. Quick, easy uploading to YouTube and Shozu. Storyboarding was a cinch. Camera shortcut button, plus autofocus, great for snapping pics on the fly. Easy-to-access external microSD card slot is ready for 32 GB.
TIRED: 2.2-inch screen isn't ideal for peeping videos. Only 3.2-megapixel cam? (Tarantino wouldn’t settle for less than 5 megapixels). Only a measly 1-GB microSD included. Nav and Symbian UIQ more difficult to penetrate than Fort Knox. Curved slider makes lower keypad buttons harder to press.Price/maker: $500 (unlocked), Motorola
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read our full Motorola Z10 review.
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
: The Sylvania G Netbook is a fairly direct response to the Asus Eee PC 900 series, with an 8.9-inch screen, Linux OS and chicklet keys that make touch typing a fever dream fantasy. And while some of Sylvania's choices here are merely dreadful (the arrow keys are a mere 12mm wide — thinner than my pinky), it's actually the OS that roy
