Luidia's eBeam whiteboard has been around for a while, the one that takes a snapshot of the notes on the board and saves them as an image. Now those images can be transmitted directly to a Kindle.

At first I thought this was a pairing of two cool but inessential technologies resulting in something that's, well, cool but inessential. But now I think it's kind of neat. In the future, instead of actually watching someone give a presentation, the audience will be staring at their Kindles and tablets the whole time.

Imagine the consequences. Teachers, bosses, parole officers, no one would never be able to tell if you were paying attention to the notes or goofing off on the internet. Not by reading Gizmodo, of course. We would never condone such behavior. [Press Release via Ubergizmo]

Indeed, the only way you are going to make a phone call on this is if you use your imagination. These paper iPhones are designed for one thing and one thing only—taking notes. At least it's double sided—one half for regular notes and the other half for technical sketches. [Notepod via iSpazio via OhGizmo]

BUT SERIOUSLY. As much as I would like to end this signal week in Gizmodo history, Get Me Off This Rock week, by hijacking a decommissioned shuttle and spending the summer in orbit, work must go on. I'm heading over to Popular Science (where I worked before Giz, actually) to be the editor of their website. All of you millions of Giz folks are now required to come check out PopSci.com after every Giz visit, y'hear?

I've had a great time writing for all you guys, and I've done some stuff I wouldn't be able to do anywhere else. To all the Giz crew who I couldn't convince to join me in my hijacked (I'm doing it) Shuttle (Brian wouldn't come because the Internet connection is lousy), best of luck to you here on Earth. You're all the best.

With Love,
Space Mahoney

When I went to plug in my Verizon EV-DO card, all was well. But when I moved to hook up my digital camera's USB cable in the other port, my smile turned upside down—just like the old plastic MacBooks, there is almost zero clearance in between the two USB ports, meaning anything that's slightly above the normal plug size will block the other opening. Guhhhh.

On the old MBPs, there was a USB port on each side, for happier, double-connected times. Now if you use most any USB 3G card, you'll have to hang it limply from a short extension cable if you want to get at your other port.

Sure you can also buy a card reader for your ExpressCard slot (even though the CF cards found in most quality DSLRs require an ugly protrusion), but that doesn't help when you want to download images to your machine live via camera control software—a liveblogging essential. Also forget about using any USB card reader you had, certain bulky flashdrives or your prized USB Humping Dog without blocking the other port.

So if you're getting a MBP and a 3G card to go with it, go with ExpressCard for the 3G—a nagging little thing that the old MBPs had on this new version. Otherwise this thing is a dream, and our review is more spot-on every day. Just little things like this that you wouldn't normally think about that pop up. Have you ever been surprised by an unsuspected limitation of new gear like this? Let us know.

I'm a bit road weary and drinking-weary but tomorrow I'm going off to this conference called EG, or Entertainment Gathering. It's about a 2 hour drive south to Monterey, but I think it'll be worth it. I generally avoid these things at all cost, but everyone I've talked to says the combo of tech and entertainment types makes for an unforgettable mix.

Snow will fall in Tahoe this next week! While NYC was butt cold, somehow, when there's material to snowboard on, it's not so bad. I'm going to be reviewing some snowboarding gear (with tech in it) this winter, in anticipation of the Gizmodo Snow Fun Meetup. Or whatever the hell we're calling it this year. Oh yea, it'll be April 4th. I hope you can make it this year. (Someone has to work the bunny slopes with Adrian.)

Here are my favorite posts from today:
• Dealzmodo Hacks: 8 Ways To Get More Miles Out Of Your Old PC
• Windows Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Can You Get the Real Internet?
• The Slimmest Houses On Earth Are Made In Japan

Noah is going to work for Fast Company, Lisa went to Tokyo for NPR work and left me to watch the new puppy, go to puppy school and get him neutered and pick up poo and pee at all hours of the day/night. In the middle of the night, he was trying to take his cone thing off to lick his stitches and realized I had to go get a bigger one from the vet at 2am. (I call him captain radar when he wears it.) Doesn't sound that bad a few days later, but then the Mac fried its HDD with no warning or clicking. Probably the logic board. One HDD swap and Time Machine/Capsule restore later and I've got zero data loss. (I set mine to back up at 1am every night, using Time Machine Editor.) I consider that my lucky break of the week. Lisa's RAM fried too, when she got back, the symptom being repeat kernel panics. Maybe it was the full moon.

Here are my favorite posts from this week so far:

• 10 Gadgets That Have No Business Using a Jet Engine
• What it Feels Like to Drive a Tesla Roadster
• At Gizmodo Gallery: Ancient Apple Phone Prototypes From Frog Design
• Google's iPhone Voice Search Mobile App Now Available
• 30 Mars Phoenix Discoveries NASA Will Never Show the World

It won't handwriting-recognize your scrawls though, it simply replaces Post-Its for reminder notes. And you can send your notes over the net to other Mintpad owners. Will it replace crumpled paper-notes bearing "Steve fancies you!" messages thrown between desks in class—or displace the humble SMS? Could do, but since it's out in South Korea for about $156, probably not. [Pocketables via Engadget]

Kind of surreal to know you're going to slide into another car and there's nothing you can do about it except yell like a baby. I kind of feel responsible, though, because he usually listens to classical music on his iPod and I got tired of it and so I jacked mine in and put on some Van Halen. What you listen to definitely affects how you drive and I also blame the music as much as I blame the fact that he's too old to be driving as fast as he was. I'd show you the photos, but I think my dad would rather I deleted them all.

Here are some of my favorite posts from yesterday:
• Netflix HD Impressions, On Xbox 360
• Why It's Safer Than Ever To Buy First-Generation Hardware
• MacBook vs MacBook Pro: Hardcore Graphics Death Match
• Microsoft Secondlight

The site looks nice, and it's great to be around again during the day to cover you while you go get lunch, etc. But it is a lot harder to dig into the long term work while the news is buzzing about. Here are my favorite stories you and the gang found today:

•Sears Black Friday Ad Leaks, Full of HDTVs, Digital Cameras, and Other Gadgets
• Motorola's Aura Luxury Phone Given First Groping, General Thumbs-Up
• iPhone 3G Baseband Break-In, Unlock Closer

*with regards and thanks to Crecente and Ashcraft for letting me lift their night notes format.

The differences I noticed between American baseball and Japanese baseball being that everyone chants a different song for each batter in complete synchronicity, the stadium food includes fried shrimp, when you hit a homerun you get a stuffed animal, and Tiger fans cosplay as Tigers. That's about it. The dome itself had no conspicuous technology, which confused me. I expect the oldest tech I'd find in such a prominent structure to come from the year 2020, no older. Time for a retrofit, I thought, until Lisa pointed out that everyone was watching highlights and listening to commentary on seg 1 digital tuners on cellphones. The Dome has a lot of wireless infrastructure so that tons of people can use their phones without bogging down the network. (Basically, more antennas.)

I took the above shots with a Nikon D700, program mode, vivid color profile, with a 24-120mm lens. I could have used longer glass, but shots were fine. Given the lightning, I did have to tweak exposure a bit when the stadium lights overwhelmed the AI's ability to weight exposure towards whatever subjects were focused on. The shot at the top of this post is terrible, but I love the composition and the sign message: Do not take your eyes off the ball!

[TokyoMango]

I rode the slide above despite its major joints were leaking acrid, over-chlorinated water. It was fun, but I suppose that's what made it dangerous for the others we were with; two flipped, with one ending up sliding down the entire ride on her neck, inhaling a good bit of water and eventually being delivered to the ER. You'd think it would be a good thing that I had a waterproof camera along to record the experience. But as I said, security guards asked persistently that I delete such photos to "protect my friend's identity". Seems more like they're trying to avoid posts like this one. Or this one! Or this one! As mr dude walked away, I passive aggressively snapped a few more of him walking away.

I know that guy who convinced me to delete the photos was just doing his job, but I didn't know his job was to be a dick.

My sense is that I didn't have to delete the photos and never have before during work related activities. But I would have had to leave the park right then and there and I wasn't ready to make that call for our entire group of 10. I took shots of the aftermath only because I thought that it was slightly negligent of the medical staff to not give a soaking wet patient standing in a breeze for 20 minutes a blanket when she could have been a little shocky.

As far as the Pentax W60 camera goes, it is still highly recommended. Although I am sad that the undelete button did not work. Apparently you need to keep the camera on and immediately undelete photos to recover them. I could attempt an SD card data recovery app, but the few I found were not cheap. I also am starting to notice that the extremely solid depth of field on this camera has an unfortunate side effect of catching all the water on the lens cover. The video mode continues to be the killer app. The focal length at widest zoom works to capture a POV of one's face during rides if one plants it on a belly. (I will warn you, although safe for work, there is decent amount of man nipple in this video.)

I guess the park has to watch its liability after accidents like that time in 1997 when a ride collapsed.

Other than that, the park was pretty good for kids, and apparently dangerous enough for adults to appreciate. Funnel cake sucked, burgers were good. I would have considered a 2009 season pass for $40, as just a fun testing ground for waterproof digital cameras, had the day not taken such a sour turn. To Raging Waters!

See, when you're dialed into news watching, you just can't leave your computer without having double digit brain cycles running on and on, nagging you, "something's going to break something's going to break some news is going to break and you won't be there to write it no one's going to write it and we're going to be late late late late!" These thoughts are often accompanied by a generous amount of eye twitching, which make it impossible to work on anything too far out in scope. So I'm moving on to a role as editorial director.

The title editorial director of Gizmodo sounds vague but it just means something simple: I'm going to work full time on things that I think are important to the long term evolution of this blog; that means more deep features, more service pieces to help newbies, more things like Jesús's amazing lego trip and less trade show humping. More reader meetups where we can fondle gadgets together and just improving things all around in terms of what's expected of a gadget blog today and things that tech publications have never tried. All projects I didn't have the bandwidth to process before. I'll also be helping the other Gawker sites with their field reporting as assistant managing editor of Gawker Media. (All those liveblogs helped a lot and it's only right to share that info with the other editors.) I'm looking forward to the new challenges, but I've got one more thing up my sleeve I'm excited for: I'll also be joining Ryan Block and Peter Rojas's new venture, gdgt, as an advisor. While the competition I've had with the Engadget guys has been well chronicled, I think on a certain level, it makes perfect sense for us to achieve some sort of Voltron status.

Of course, Gizmodo hasn't been about a guy and a blog for years. To make all that news handling go smoothly, I'm getting help managing our platoon's worth of writers from someone who has been at Gizmodo longer than anyone, including me. He'll be introducing himself shortly and I thank him in advance for allowing me to not only work on the site in a new way, but for allowing me the new spare time to regain some sanity and shave some pounds off the old keyboard rest I call my gut.

Thank you for listening, and good morning.

Jason's taking a last minute vacation to some tropical destination, and I spent the day finding a ski cabin and getting ready for the upcoming snowboarding season. Jesús is leaving Berlin and getting back home before moving; Mark and Wilson are settling into new homes in new cities; Adam is in Cape Cod; John Herrman is ending his internship and returning to Scotland in a few days; CES prep starts to warm up. We rest so that we can brace ourselves and resist the rush of new gadgets the companies want to shove down our gullets. So, we're taking the holiday weekend to post a little less and relax a little more. If you end up missing us more than you can bear, here's a link to our most recent top stories and features. Otherwise, we'll see you on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Unless some MF decides to break some news...

Jeff Witt of Lenovo is one of my favorite PR people because he simply will not bullshit you. He's a former editor, which explains a lot. His wife, Sarah, was a journalist, too, but has been ill in the past few years with PLS, a motor neuron disease related to ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. There is no cure, so far, and she's limited to being stuck in a wheelchair although she used to be an amazing runner. Every year, Jeff holds a race to raise funds toward research.

I kicked in a bit, since the race is far from where I live, and If you'd like to donate or participate, there's more info here: [MagmileRace]

I was in Hawaii and it was terrific. I swam with a whale shark, took my first surf lessons, hung out with Lisa's family and ate a lot of great food. I did work a few days at the start, and checked a lot of email on the iPhone, which got terrific 3G across both Oahu and Maui, much better than I get in SF. I also got some quality time in with a new waterproof camera and I did not lose it scrambling away from killer waves or imaginary sharks (for once). I also got some quality time in with the Kindle and thanks to its unique properties, finished about 1000 pages of book at blog reading speeds. More on those later. For now, I'll just say it's nice to be home.