Vintage iPods are selling for amazing amounts, All Caps can make you overlook important information, and Human Glue comes to Japan. These and more stories on this week’s Geekspeak.
A first generation iPod classic – “battery is really good for its age” – is on sale priced at $9,999.99. A second-generation, still-boxed iPod classic – that’s the last version that had the moving wheel – is currently listed for an extraordinary $19,999.99.
The National Weather Service publishes its forecasts in all caps no matter what the weather. It might be MOSTLY SUNNY, WITH A HIGH NEAR 75, or it could be HAIL AND DAMAGING WINDS, WITH SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS, but in either case it’ll be shouted in an all-caps warning, like a house is on fire. But earlier this month, the weather service took a typographic sedative and officially started using mixed caps in its weather forecasts.
An Apple patent was published today detailing a headset and communications platform that uses point-to-point network technology instead of cellular (via AppleInsider).
The application published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, called “Point-to-Point ad hoc voice communication”, describes a headset invention capable of connecting with similar devices over local wireless ad hoc networks, or peer-to-peer links.
At the convergence of wearable technology + machine translation, the Pilot is the world’s first smart earpiece which translates between users speaking different languages.
My hack-day project at work. Gwen and River are my daughters and they agreed to do this video with me right before school.
But if you are in danger and cannot phone for help, we will hear your scream and send an automated message to 999, telling them who you are and where to find you.
One Scream has been developed to only respond to genuine panic screams. Just as your own ear hears real distress, our app can also distinguish a true panic scream from other screams and sounds.
Clothes and things searching according to the picture.
To test this, the scientists created an trap 929 times the normal size of a regular cockroach trap and rounded up three test subjects to see how well their new mega-glue worked. The three subjects were a scientist himself, a sprinter, and a sumo wrestler. Each had the task of getting across the strip of glue without becoming a permanent part of Earth Chemical’s Aperture Science-like experiments.
