one digital life

GM Concept Car

Wow! Why don’t we have this today? Ignore that bit in the beginning about the Mazda RX8, they should have edited that out.

Video Link | Found via Steve Garfield

Jobs, Gates, Mossberg

Oh how I would have loved to be sitting at this table. From left to right, that’s Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and technology columnist, Walt Mossberg. They all sat together for a snack at the D4: All Things Digital conference. What do you think they are talking about?

There are many other photos in this gallery (multiple pages), in some of them Steve and Bill seem to be having some laughs. Maybe they aren’t the mortal enemies that we always assume.

Found via TUAW

UPDATE: Someone calling themselves Walt Mossberg left a comment on this post, with a correction… these photos were actually taken at the D3 conference, in May, 2005. I’ve confirmed that these were taken at D3, but now the only question is, was that really Walt Mossberg visiting my humble little blog? If it really was you, Walt, I’ll casually say… Thanks for stopping by, please come back again (while I think to myself… That’s so freakin cool! Walt Mossberg read my blog!). Alternatively, if that was some prankster out there, I’ll say… you suck! (as I think to myself… You Suck!).

What is Net Neutrality?

I’ve been meaning to post about this forever, but I kept forgetting about it. You’ve probably heard the words “Net Neutrality” thrown around a lot lately. If you’ve been wondering exactly what that means… the good folks at Public Knowledge have you covered. They’ve produced a really straight forward video giving a basic explanation. The graphics are a bit cheesy, but it gets the message across in an easy to understand format.

I encourage you to get involved however you can, even if it’s just spreading the word. Don’t let anyone dictate where you can, or can’t go online.

Found via Quality Peoples

Links: Video

It’s a car… it’s a boat… it’s both.

Gibbs Technology specializes in High Speed Amphibious vehicles. They make 3 models. The Quadski is in the ATV / personal water-craft variety, the Aquada is more like a sports car, and the Humdinga is, well… a Humdinga (think Hummer).

Now if they could just make these things fly too, they would really have something.

Found via Engadget

Google Map Hack: Weather Mole

One of the best Google Map hacks ever, Weather Mole gives you pinpoint accurate weather by just clicking on the map. It’s so much easier to use than any of the other weather sites I’ve seen. Unfortunately, it only works in the continental US and Hawaii.

Found via Rocketboom

Eye-Fi: SD Card with built in WiFi

How would you like to upload your pictures straight from your camera to Flickr, or another photo sharing site, without ever going near a computer? That’s exactly what Eye-Fi wants to give you. They are a new startup here in the Bay Area, and they’re developing a product called Eye-Film. Basically, it’s an SD card with built in WiFi. They’re also working on a Compact Flash version.

The idea is to allow your camera to upload images directly to the internet, to a central server. That server would then route the pictures to a photo service of your choice.

There isn’t much information on their site yet but it looks pretty cool.

Found via Laughing Squid

The future of real people?

I’ve long held the belief that as time goes by, and it gets easier and easier to create realistic looking 3D people, we’ll see more and more of them used in media in place of a real person. I see this happening in all media… print, TV, film, etc…

I had a minor affirmation of this belief today. I had lunch at McDonalds. When I sat down at a table to eat my meal, I noticed this card. At first I didn’t give it a second thought, but after a quick double-take, I noticed this is not a real woman. “She” is a 3D fabrication.

Instead of this being an expensive photo-shoot with a real model, photographer, and a half dozen assistants, it was probably one lone-designer sitting in his home office (in his underwear) with a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite and Poser.

Mark my words, this is only the beginning. Some day soon you’ll have to look twice at that Victory Secrets catalog you have hidden in your night stand.

BootCamp

Several people have written in to tell me about BootCamp, Apple’s new utility for officially booting into Windows on an Intel Mac. Thanks, you can stop sending in the tips. I saw the announcement too. :)

I actually wasn’t planning to write about it, just because I knew that every Mac site out there would be covering it at length.

But, as long as I’m here… I think this is great. It’s going to be awesome to dual-boot a mac without using some funky hacked-up method. This is actually an incentive for me to get one of the new Intel Macs (once they come out with the full desktop machine). I don’t need a PC that often, so it would be really nice to get rid of this dell that just takes up space on my desk, most of the time.

As much as I appreciate Apple providing a way to dual-boot, I look forward to the day they roll out a virtualization solution. It would be much cooler to run Windows within OSX, instead of booting into one or the other. Until Apple does it, you can check out this Beta from Parallels.

Oh, and don’t forget this “Word to the Wise” from the BootCamp downloads page:

“Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world.”