The electrode in the pic above was attached to a rotating apex, once turned on, the revolving surface was fed by an electricity supply, which gave rise to the effect above via a multiplier. Using various photography techniques, the images above were captured. Disconcertingly, the hot electrode was quite close to the user's face, maintaining a constant distance away by only a few centimeters. We have to ask; when will this madness stop? Electrocution is not cool. [Tesladownunder]

We just knew these "common people" were total sickos.

Maybe the hacked iPhone is just part of the joke, an inside snicker of SNL writers. Maybe the hack makes for an simpler, more customizable production prop. Or maybe, since we knew Apple and NBC weren't getting along before, this is a not-so-subtle kick in the groin from one corporation to another. Hit the jump for a bigger version.

Beautiful.

Giz: Can you override Time Machine to seriously delete stuff you never want to see again?
Apple: In the "starfield" view you have an option: "Delete all backup versions of this file." If you do that, you will never see it again. Also, you can select things you don't want to be picked up by Time Machine. You can affect the scope, and specify areas you don't want to cover.

Giz: Will I want to leave Time Machine running when I'm in the field, or will I have to turn it off to preserve battery life?
Apple: No, it is really low over head.

Giz: Will I be able to get as long battery life on MacBook Pro?
Apple: No specific measurement, but don't expect to see a huge difference.

Giz: Are Mail To Do and iCal To Do the same?
Apple: There is one list of To Dos that can be expressed in both iCal and Mail. To Dos are also synced to your mail server, so you can see them from multiple machines.

Giz: What do Mail To Dos look like when viewed from 3rd party mail apps or from an iPhone?
Apple: To Dos show up as normal mail in 3rd Party and non-Leopard mail programs, including iPhones and Blackberrys.

Giz: Are Widgets from Leopard going to be made to work across all Apple platforms (i.e. iPhone)?
Apple: Widgets will work in Dashboard and will continue to work in Dashboard.

Giz: What's new with the Dictionary tool?
Apple: There's a lot of pretty cool stuff. We've added Wikipedia support and a Japanese dictionary as well.

Giz: What are the system requirements?
Apple: Intel Processor, PPC G5, PPC G4, 867MHz or better; 512 MB of memory; DVD drive for installation.

Giz: Will Leopard come with iLife '08?
Apple: No. If you buy a new CPU with Leopard, you get the new verison of iLife. If you have an older system with Tiger, you have to buy both the iLife upgrade and Leopard upgrade.

Giz: Does iChat still have the Star Wars hologram effect? We've added a whole lot of different effects. I am not sure if the hologram one is in there. We included the most effective ones, the ones that work the best. I think [the hologram effect] is not in there.

Giz: What's the name of the next OS update cat?
We don't talk about future products.

Though they couldn't answer all of our questions, they did recommend visiting the updated Mac OS X page, particularly the section on 300+ New Features.

Our readers were upset. AT&T wrote us quickly after the story hit, attempting to clarify their position and do general damage control. They explained that the TOS was a result of their corporate mergers and that they "do not terminate customer service solely because a customer speaks negatively about AT&T." Still, the statement didn't mean much because the TOS still gave them the right, and even implied the intent to limit customer freedom of speech.

Now AT&T has written us again, informing us that the TOS will change:

We are revising the terms of service to clarify our intent. The language in question will be revised to reflect AT&T's respect for our customers' right to express opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. And we will make clear that we do not terminate service because a customer expresses their opinion about AT&T.

They're doubling the chipsets in each TV to get that 1080p signal. One set enables uncompressed 720p and 1080i video to be transmitted over the 5GHz wireless band, using 20MHz of bandwidth and reaching distances up to 100 feet with the same quality as HDMI cable. Two of the chipsets ganged together send 1080p video wirelessly, using 40MHz of bandwidth. The company also revealed that version 2.0 will combine two chipsets into one for the 1080p solution.

Amimon is a fabless semiconducter company, so it won't be building dongles and boxes using this tech, but will supply them to consumer electronics manufacturers. Amimon is hoping WHDI will become the new wireless HDMI standard, and told us by January, 2008 at CES, a variety of its partners will be announcing products with the WHDI interface, either installed internally or deployed in the form of dongles that transmit and receive the WHDI signal.

Amimon wasn't willing to give us a complete list of manufacturers set to receive the chipsets or embrace the technology, but did mention European high-end TV manufacturer Loewe and Japan's Funai would demo WHDI at the upcoming IFA convention in Berlin. Amimon added that Sanyo was also planning the use the tech (and we saw a demo of its projector running WHDI at 720p at CES last January) and said that Motorola is also an investor in the company.

When we asked about pricing of the WHDI chipset, Amimon wasn't willing to spell out specifics, but said the components would cost "several hundred dollars" at the outset. The company added that as economies of scale improve, the chipset should add less than $10 to the price of a device. [Amimon]

Here's the Amimon press release:

AMIMON Announces WHDI Chipset Availability

Whole-home HD Video Connectivity Net Now Unwired and Uncompressed;
WHDI HDTVs To Be Demonstrated at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show

Santa Clara, Calif. - August 28, 2007 - AMIMON Inc., an emerging leader in semiconductor technology for wireless transmission of high-definition (HD) video, has today announced the availability of its Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI™) chipset. The WHDI chipset (AMN2110 and AMN2210) enables CE display and device manufacturers to develop home entertainment products that connect wirelessly.

The WHDI chipset can be embedded into CE devices such as LCD and plasma HDTVs, multimedia projectors, A/V receivers, DVD players (HD-DVD and Blu-ray), set-top boxes (STBs), game consoles, PCs and HD video accessories (wireless for HDMI dongles), allowing wireless streaming of uncompressed HD video and audio.

"With WHDI chipsets in hand, CE manufacturers will now be able to offer consumers wireless HDTVs and other HD wireless video devices based on the WHDI standard," said Noam Geri, vice president of marketing and business development at AMIMON.

"Consumers should see initial WHDI-based products at the end of this year, with a wide variety of WHDI-based CE products available in 2008."

AMIMON's WHDI makes it possible for a wireless whole-home HD video connectivity net that allows the devices to share HD content throughout the entire home, up to 30 meters (100 feet) through walls, while maintaining superb, wire-equivalent quality and robustness with no latency. WHDI is the only uncompressed wireless technology with the capability of covering the entire home.

"Home entertainment enthusiasts are asking for wireless HDTVs that can be hung on the wall without having to run cumbersome and unaesthetic audio/video wires," said Roland Bohl, Loewe's director of R&D. "AMIMON's WHDI technology enables us to meet this demand while maintaining the high quality of HDTVs."

CE manufacturers Loewe and Funai will be demonstrating wireless HDTVs based on AMIMON's WHDI technology at the IFA Consumer Electronics tradeshow in Berlin, August 31 - September 5, 2007.

AMIMON's WHDI technology is based on a unique video modem approach. WHDI supports delivery of uncompressed 1080p (with equivalent video rates of up to 3 Gbps) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, in compliance with FCC regulations. Uncompressed 720p, 1080i and 1080p 24/30p (with equivalent video rates of up to 1.5 Gbps) can be delivered in a 20MHz channel, conforming to worldwide 5GHz regulations. Range is beyond 100 feet through walls (entire home), and latency is less than 1 millisecond.

More than just a wire replacement, AMIMON's WHDI enables a connectivity matrix of multipoint-to-multipoint connections, allowing consumers to eliminate all the A/V wires and cables in the entire home.

AMIMON's WHDI chipsets and reference designs are available now. Companies, engineers and developers interested in additional information on WHDI chipsets should contact AMIMON at info@amimon.com.

For further technical details of AMIMON's WDHI technology, please visit: www.amimon.com/technology.shtml.

About AMIMON
AMIMON is a fabless semiconductor company pioneering wireless uncompressed high-definition video for universal connectivity among CE video devices. AMIMON's uncompressed Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI™) allows flat-panel televisions and multimedia projectors to wirelessly interface to all HDTV video sources at a quality equivalent to that achieved with wired interfaces such as component video, DVI and HDMI™.

The company is headquartered in Herzlia, Israel, with offices in Santa Clara, Calif., USA, and Tokyo, Japan. More information is available at www.AMIMON.com.

WHDI is a trademark of AMIMON, Ltd. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are those of their respective holders.

It's for real (see update below). Sure will be nice to be able to use speech commands with the iPhone, telling it to call so-and-so on those mic-equipped earbuds while keeping the phone in the pocket.

UPDATE: We got this exclusive info from Chris LeBlanc at VoiceSignal: "It works just like our other apps, so it's speaker independent and needs no training at all to recognize names, numbers and general speech. We will demo the continuous voicemode on the iPhone soon, I've already seen it — and it's nearly ready." Chris has promised us a demo copy, so we'll give you a first look as soon as it arrives. [VoiceSignal]

The burning question now is, will Blockbuster match this price reduction by Netflix? Blockbuster now offers three DVDs at a time for $16.99 through the mail only, or $17.99 to get your movies through the mail and then get free in-store exchanges. Incidentally, the company just crippled that "total access" plan, limiting it to five free in-store exchanges a month with a charge of $1.99 each afterwards. That may be one of the first things to change back to the way it was before.

The next front in this war will be movie downloading, which just heated up with Blockbuster's August 8 acquisition of Movielink. That buy might give Blockbuster access to lots of content from the major studios, putting the onus on Netflix to improve its "Watch Now" service, which suffers from a paucity of selections.

How low can these prices go before the by-mail movie rental services are completely unprofitable? Will this be a situation like a gunfight where both participants shoot each other and die?

The only drawback we saw was the inability to have two or three of these switches together in a dual-gang or triple-gang arrangement, a common configuration around here. Some of us wished the conductive-fabric switching part was available in more than just that gray color, but the rest of us thought the whole concept was way cool. Big thumbs up! [International Fashion Machines]

While this HG10 shares a lot of specs with the Canon HR10, its DVD-recording HD camcorder brother, this new shooter feels extremely compact in the hand, and while it is indeed the world's smallest hard disk HD camcorder, it's not too small, still giving you easy access to its controls. We especially like the scroll wheel on the widescreen viewfinder instead of that touchscreen on models from Panasonic and others, which in the real world tend to end up such a smudged-up mess it's hard to even see your video underneath all those fingerprints.

A slight disappointment is the life of the standard battery included with the camcorder, which Canon says will give you an hour of shooting, and that's without the LCD viewscreen on. If you want longer battery life, you'll have to spring for the extended battery, which lasts a quoted 2 hours and 15 minutes.

We especially like the way Canon applies its AVCHD codec, different from the way this compression is being used by Sony and Panasonic. Canon's compression scheme is able to lightly compress some scenes, while more heavily compressing others. For example, a simple clear blue sky can stand a lot more compression than a complicated crowd scene or a bunch of flowers.

How does the resulting footage look? Canon was unable to show us any video coming out of this camcorder at our preview session in New York, but we did see some of the HR10's 12Mbps footage which looked excellent with very few compression artifacts. The good news is that this HG10 compresses its footage even less, at a rate of 15Mbps, so it'll probably look even better. Even at that 12Mbps compression rate we saw, it looked every bit as good as HDV footage, which compresses at 25Mbps. It was some crispy-clean HD video, remarkably sharp with excellent color saturation and accuracy. Big thumbs-up.

This HG10 is recording in 1080i HD, at 1440x1080 at all compression settings. As is the case with most 1080i camcorders, only 1440 pixels per scanline are written to disk to save space, anamorphically squeezed from this HG10's 1920x1080 sensors to 1440x1080 on disk, and then stretched back out for the full 1920x1080i when it's played back.

Canon also uses "super range optical image stabilization," which uses a gyro sensor that detects motion, and sends a signal to a processor that tells a lens-shifting element to move. Then a processor analyzes the image, and if it determines the framing could be even more stable, it sends a signal back to the lens to tweak it further. It's an optical system, but it has a unique ability to feed back even more information in a second pass of stabilization. The result is good stabilization of high-frequency shaking as other systems can do, but also stabilization of subtle hand movements.

Overall, this looks like a great new camcorder from Canon. Its AVCHD format is finally becoming more widely accepted, too, with Apple's Final Cut Pro editing software now compatible with the format, along with the excellent Windows video editing application Sony Vegas Pro 7e. Unfortunately, Adobe hasn't jumped on the AVCHD bandwagon yet, but Adobe officials told us they were feverishly working on it. Adobe is planning to include AVCHD support with future updates of Premiere Pro CS3, which we hope will trickle down to Premiere Elements. But you can still edit this camcorder's footage without buying any more software, at least on the PC—Canon said a version of the Windows-only Corel (formerly Ulead) VideoStudio 11 will be included with this HG10 camcorder.

Canon says the HG10 will be priced at $1299, and will ship in early October in the United States.

UPDATE: The Sony SR5 is now the smallest hard drive-based camcorder.

Does this mean that Google is shooting video, not just stills of every street of the United States? Well, it would make sense, because those cars are already roaming the streets—might as well go ahead and get relatively high-resolution video and not just still photographs.

This camera grabs its video with five CCDs facing in all directions as well is one pointing straight up, letting it snag 75% of the full sphere. Then it sends its video via 1394 to a compressor unit that's able to stream those images at 30 frames per second. [Point Grey Research] (Thanks, Clem Taylor!)

Looks like a nifty little new red camera mounted on top of some of them. Check out our gallery for shots from Boise, Idaho; Chicago; Whitemarsh, Maryland; Southern California; Evanston, Illinois; and Redwood City, California. This is an ongoing project, so go ahead, spot the Google Streetview vehicles and send in your pics!

Many thanks to the following spotters for sending in their outstanding photos: Jared Weeks, Derrek Smith, Mark Bagley, William Stone, Ryan Slagle and Matt Dunphy.

Here's what we can relate to you now:

• It has an Intel Conroe-derived processor with DDR2 memory. This will accommodate any future Home Server applications that may be more demanding in horse power, etc.

• It features a high performance Intel chipset for maximum I/O performance including PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet, Sata 300, NCQ, etc.

• It is extremely price competitive and will be available for Windows Home Server launch.

• Can be configured up to several terabytes.

• Most likely available in silver and/or black. Color schemes are not finalized.

• It's designed for vertical or horizontal placement.

• It's an enterprise-class design in regards to thermals and up-time. But it's very quiet!

• It features eSATA for an external expansion box that will match the design and will be available by Q1 '08.

It was an entire fleet of at least 30 brand-new Chevy Cobalt cars parked behind the building, most without license plates yet. As you can see in the pictures above, each had a metal device attached to its top, which looks suspiciously like a vertical extension for mounting Google's Streetview 360° camera.

Our telltale tipster tells us he thinks Google is "preparing their invasion of US cities with an armada of C.C.C.Cs (Chevy Cobalt Camera Cars). I guess Cobalts are cheap but they certainly will be conspicuous. Maybe that's what they want."

It looks like an auspicious addition to the camera car fleet, but it's going to take more than thirty Chevy Cobalts to take a portrait of the entire Earth, or even of the Silicon Valley. However, with Google's zillions, just about anything's possible. It's got its eye on you; the end is near.

This latest round of Beatles-on-iPod scuttlebutt comes from a music industry consultancy called Music Ally, which also somehow knows that this Yellow Submarine iPod will commemorate the date when all the Beatles tracks suddenly become available on iTunes. The prescient consultants add that all these Beatles songs will be exclusive to iTunes for a month before they're offered on any other music download services.

If that's the case, why would Apple offer an iPod with all the Beatles songs pre-loaded, probably at a deeply discounted price, rather than just selling a repainted collector's model and let the fans spend more money in the store? Just like they did with the U2 iPod, you get the fans to buy the special iPod and then let them buy the songs with a higher profit margin.

That said, we've been bamboozled by all these Beatles/Apple rumors so many times, we're not going to hold our breath waiting for this one. [Tech Digest, via CrunchGear]

According to the patent, the main point of the system is to identify audio within a TV broadcast and compare it to the appropriate reference material for identification. After that, it aggregates "personalized information related to the media broadcast."

What sort of personalized info? On one hand, Google wants to layer in complementary websites and other data—I hope this means the IMDB tab I've been waiting for, but it also refers to the old "buy what the hot actress on Letterman is wearing" function. On the other hand, Google is really trying to turn your TV watching into a social experience that would be a lot smoother than logging into a computer. The goal is to share a viewing and chatting experience simultaneously, but this doesn't seem to account for the fact that DVRs have made realtime TV watching an antiquated concept.

More importantly to us, but way down in the filing, another form of analysis besides audio evaluation is discussed, that of using a still or video camera for "pattern matching":

Various known pattern-matching algorithms can be applied to an image or a sequence of images to determine the number of viewers present in a broadcast environment during a particular broadcast. The images and or data derived from the images can be used in combination with audio descriptors to gather personalized information for a user, compute popularity ratings, or for any other purpose.

This is a demo unit we have been provided so the actual units they put into retail may differ (they haven't said one way or another) but for their sake, I certainly hope the actual units look better than this. I personally have a current S3 box at home and can say that this unit is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper looking and is lighter in overall weight (feels substantially so for some reason). Just my first impressions though&mdas;haven't fired this unit up yet to see what other differences might be. The remote that came with it is also 'cheap'—is lighter and not as good looking as the original shiny unit that comes with the current S3. As you can see the cable card slots have been moved up front and one slot supports the new m-card while the other supports only the traditional s-card.

Don't miss Gridskipper's location-based iPhone line picmap

The problem is, the iPhone is only available through AT&T, in my opinion one of the most unscrupulous telecoms around. AT&T's tactics combine Microsoft-style anti-competitive maneuvers and anti-privacy efforts á la RIAA for a chilling effect. I avoid giving AT&T any of my money; it's a personal boycott. I'd like to call for a more wide- ranging one, but that brings up an interesting question: Does a hyped gadget you really want trump any moral misgivings you might have about where it's coming from?

First, let me break down why I think AT&T isn't worthy of your hard-earned money. Back in the 1980s, the original telecom giant was broken up for being a monopoly only to cobble itself back together again years later to nearly the same form as before. (Of course, it now has competition in some businesses, but in many regions of the US it still reigns frighteningly supreme.)

Last year, it was discovered that AT&T has been secretly spying on Americans for the government. Maybe it still is. Then, just recently, it announced that it planned to spy on Internet surfers yet again, looking for pirated media files, presumably to the delight of the RIAA and MPAA. If you don't want to get spied on and want to switch ISPs, guess what? Depending on where you live, you might not have any other options. And if AT&T snoops on all data passing through its network, most US Internet users will be affected, not just AT&T customers. It runs a significant amount of the backbone infrastructure of the Internet, leaving little traffic outside its grasp.

So what we have is a company that doesn't have privacy at the top of its priority list, not to mention the anti-trust laws of this country. It's setting terrible precedents left and right, and its vast power that comes from its huge size makes it all the more unlikely to change for the better. We, as contentious, tech-savvy individuals, should go out of our way to deprive this company of money, power and influence.

However, there are thousands, maybe millions, of people out there just dying to get their hands on an iPhone, and AT&T has a lock on the device for five years.

So, Apple and iPhone fans, what's more important to you? Having the hottest device, or knowing that you are standing up to a company, that in my opinion, has no regard for the privacy and consumer choice of Americans? Is it up to us, the customers, to stand up to these practices, or should we just keep shopping and hope the regulators do their jobs?

I, for one, will be continuing my AT&T boycott for the foreseeable future. –Adam Frucci

They're more than just useless models, too. Each one has a MacBook attached to its ass-end to power the screen, showing a demo that also appears on all the machines in the store. That oughta be enough to whip up the faithful into a iPhone lovin' MacFrenzy. Check out our exclusive gallery below of shots from the Soho store. – Charlie White

CTX Imaging is a unique method that uses computed-tomography with high-speed cinefluoroscopic video (1,000fps) and X-rays to create extremely accurate captures of skeletons in very fast motion. We talked with Dr. Elizabeth Brainerd, from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University, who explains this open project after the jump.

[All videos by E.L. Brainerd, K. Metzger and D.B. Baier]

Gizmodo: What are we looking at there?

Dr. Brainerd: This is a marker-based CTX of a pig feeding in slow motion, at 1/4 real speed. The pig collects pig chow from the ground and then chews for several cycles before collecting more food. The X-ray movie is shown first, and then the 3D skull and jaw models from CT are superimposed to show the accurate alignment of the bones over time.

Gizmodo: What is the method to achieve this kind of imaging?

Dr. Brainerd: Small metal beads were surgically implanted into the upper and lower jaws and teeth. A 3D model from CT scanning was made of the skull and jaws. Biplanar, high-speed cinefluoroscopic video of feeding was collected and the X-ray video was used to align the markers in the CT model to produce an accurate (±1 mm) reconstruction of bone position over time.

Gizmodo: How long does it take get the process complete, from the tomography scan to final animation?

Dr. Brainerd: Animal training, surgery to implant the metal spheres into the bones and recovery together take 1-2 weeks. Then we can collect and process the CT scan data in one day and the X-ray movie data in one day.

For one movement sequence it takes about 3-4 hours to extract the 3D coordinates of the metal spheres from the two video views, and then another 3 or so hours to combine the movement coordinates with the 3D model from the CT scan using the animation program Maya. So three days for data collection and processing. We are just getting started with our software development, so we expect that some of these steps will be faster and more automated in the future.

Gizmodo: Are you planning to do this in real time in the future? Is that even possible?

Dr. Brainerd: Real time could, I think, be possible with radiopaque metal spheres surgically implanted in the bones—so for experimental animals only (not humans).

We currently have no plans to develop real-time CTX imaging because we are creating this technology for scientific research, and we do not see a current research application for real-time imaging. There could be some entertainment value in real time. It sure would be fun to see the bones inside an animal move in real time—just like having Xx-ray vision.

(Video at full speed)

Gizmodo: Are there any potential commercial applications?

Dr. Brainerd: There may be future medical applications, particularly in orthopedics, maxillofacial surgery and possibly orthodontics. Seeing bones (and teeth) in action before and after treatment may help plan procedures to match patients' individual needs and to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment. At Brown we have three orthopedic bioengineering faculty on our CTX research team, and research groups at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and University of Pittsburgh have made great strides toward developing a marker-less system that can be used for human studies. We are also working toward a markerless CTX system at Brown, but at the moment we have only implemented a system that requires the surgical implantation of small (1 mm or less) metal spheres into the bones.

See abstract of a talk from the HFH and Pitt groups given by Scott Tashman at the 2006 American Society of Biomechanics meeting:

Gizmodo: Are you planning on licensing this technology to other scientific institutions or is it an open project, available for everyone?

Dr. Brainerd: Open project. We are currently working on a website that will have some software downloads and information on where to buy and how to build the necessary hardware.

Gizmodo: Amazing, and who is paying for all this cool gear?

Dr. Brainerd: This CTX development project at Brown is funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Thanks to Dr. Brainerd for her time and all the videos. – Jesus Diaz

(fixed skull, rotating in 3D)

[All videos by E.L. Brainerd, K. Metzger and D.B. Baier]

Bones in Motion: Brown Scientists To Create New 3-D X-ray System [Brown University]

Project page [Brown University]

CTX Imaging Shows 3D Bones In Fast Motion, Total Recall Style [Gizmodo]

If you don't remember, the Falcon is a 3D joystick that actually lets you "feel" textures and surfaces by moving the ball around. We've been hearing about it for years now (I tried it at the last E3), but it's good to know that this thing is definitely solid and shipping, and not vapor. We never doubted ya, Novint. – Jason Chen

Thanks Tristan!

Product Page [Novint]

People have been talking about the "hidden cost" of iPhone, that is, the monthly fee that will be required to do all of the fun webby things iPhone can do (YouTube video being just one of them). But it's so well hidden, nobody yet knows what the cost is.

Here's my wild guess, or rather, my suggestion: among other service offerings, Apple and AT&T should announce a super-unlimited do-what-you-want plan. A toss-the-meter-out-of-the-taxi, flat-fee all-you-can-eat data and voice plan.

Here's what I'm thinking: a totally worry-free plan is a very Apple thing to do. The company complains about music "rental" services having too many strings attached, and about how complicated multi-tiered pricing can be in a consumer environment. Counting the number of minutes you talk or megabytes you download can be both stressful and complicated, and worse, it most assuredly curbs usage.

All-you-can-eat data is well known among smartphones, and unlimited talking minutes have been a business customer reality for a long time. Why not make it a consumer reality? Does Steve Jobs really want you to wait until 9pm to make calls, or wonder who is in or out of your "network" before grabbing your iPhone?

The big argument for a completely worry-free plan is that it's exactly what happened in both the long-distance and ISP businesses. We went from worrying about how many cents per minute we paid calling Phoenix, to using Skype to make free calls to Hong Kong. We went from having conditional access—the dial-up modem; early on there were even minute limits or data quantity caps—to having expensive but unconditional always-on access. Web 2.0 wouldn't have happened without this, and true Web 3.0, the mobile Internet revolution, won't happen without it either. It's not just the better bandwidth, it's the constant link. Now, on your PC, the only time you think about being connected to the Internet is on the rare occasion that, for some reason, you are not.

You may have noticed I used the word "expensive." If you combine unlimited calling with unlimited data today, the bill is well over $100 a month. Here might be where the iPhone's mediocre EDGE-network access comes in handy: because it's not true 3G, the unlimited data may cost $20 per month or less. Tack on unlimited calling (and calling features) for say, $80, and you've got a completely worry-free $100-per-month plan. Arguably, carriers could do it for even less. Expensive? Sure, but not out of the realm of imagination, especially when you're talking about voice and data together on your primary, and probably sole, phone.

While Apple certainly loves a simple plan, I may be crazy to think that AT&T would go for it. Monetizing a la carte data services and incremental voice and messaging usage is how carriers make money these days. But the iPhone platform doesn't play into that. It is specifically not a phone that Cingular will load with all of its apps.

If the iPhone really is revolutionary, than the service plan that comes with it will have to be revolutionary too. Let's ditch the taxi meter, and head for the open road. (Where hopefully the EDGE service will be good enough for a YouTube video download, but you never know.)

So guys, am I nuts or right on the money? And how much would you pay for a flat-out worry-free plan? – Wilson Rothman

Our Continuing iPhone Coverage [Gizmodo]

Its downloadable player acts like a video Web browser, letting you find and watch video, but its makers are aiming for an experience that feels like conventional TV. It'll have personal video recording functions, and will offer a variety of channels that might remind you of cable television. It'll also let you search for videos using keywords, watch videos your friends liked, and recommend videos for you according to those you've liked.

Video uploaders will dig Veoh, too, because it will allow them to charge for their videos, and Veoh will automatically upload those clips to YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. Like YouTube, it will create an embeddable Flash player so videos can be virally strewn all over the Web. Also like YouTube, you can watch all the videos on your browser, too.

Although the player wasn't yet available at this writing, we did notice the superior video quality on the existing videos available on Veoh's website. It's using peer-to-peer technology, which the company says allows it to publish "high resolution full-screen television quality video." So far, it looks good, and we're on the lookout for that player as soon as it's available. – Charlie White

Veoh Site [Veoh, via Technology Review]

Now the company has its GeForce line of graphics cards for gaming and entertainment, Quadro for design and creation and now Tesla for high-performance graphics visualization for oil and gas exploration, brain research, weather prediction and other such intense tasks. And yes, it can certainly play Doom, but that would be like using a nuclear weapon to kill a mosquito.

Check out the gallery for some serious techno-porn of this awesome hardware, where you'll see the deskside unit, graphics card and blade servers in all their glory. Then jump for the specific and awe-inspiring particulars of these muthas.

Using NVIDIA's CUDA software architecture released along with some of the company's other high-end graphics cards a few months ago, NVIDIA has figured out ways to use massively multithreaded parallel computing to do some incredibly powerful computations. These Tesla processors can be lashed together as GPU servers, and then you hook them up to a PC using PCI Express x16 Gen 2 cables.

The GPU computing server blade, which NVIDIA calls the Tesla S870, will have a retail price of $12,000, and will be packed with four x8 series GPUs and suck up 550 watts of juice. That's good for over 500 gigaflops per GPU, and it's only one rack unit high. With four GPUs, do the math. That's some serious power. Stack a few of these up and it starts getting scary, in fact, according to NVIDIA four of those blades strapped together have enough processing power to qualify as one of the top 100 supercomputers.

That badass-looking deskside supercomputer, the Tesla D870, will have two x8 series GPUs and will also require 550W of power, and it's also good for 500 gigaflops per GPU. It''ll sell for $7,500 beginning in August.

The card will also be available in August, and it's called the Tesla C870. It has one x8 series GPU, which also can crank out 500 gigaflops, and it will sell for relatively cheap $1499. – Charlie White

Not only that, new sales of HD DVD players are nonexistent, with Blu-ray being the only things moving now.

The more tech savvy of us rent our stuff on Netflix or Blockbuster Online (which is still supporting both formats for now), but this announcement—covered in many mainstream media sources—had a big impact on people who actually rent at Blockbuster.

Any of you tipsters working at other retail outlets see something similar? Email us if you have. – Jason Chen

Thanks tipster!

Oh, but it's not just for the iPhone. The store rep said there are a bunch of other positions in the store they need to fill as well, but we're pretty sure there wouldn't be that many gigs sans Jesus Phone. – Jason Chen

Thanks Evan!

The cases are coated in "Viscotex," which feels like a combination of vinyl and plastic and has a brushed metal look to it. There's a detachable handle and a little holder for your IR remote, and can actually be used as a case while your laptop's in use.

After using it for a week, we can say it's a good solution for schlepping your laptop around. We usually go with a messenger bag because we can carry more than just a laptop in it, but for $70 (15-inch), $90 (17-inch), or $65 (13-inch), you can keep your MacBook safe from drops and bumps. Oh, and there's a pink 13-inch version for unicorn lovers as well.

The construction quality is solid, and will definitely be able to absorb shocks either by itself or as another cushion inside a backpack. There are two straps inside each case to secure the laptop as well.

And when your MacBook's in use, you can flip the case upside down and sit your laptop feet down on four pads so it can be raised up adequately for ventilation. The cases also come with a little holder for your IR remote, which is handy if you're into slideshows on the go.

In short, it's a good laptop case with no real defects that we can see. – Jason Chen

Product Pages [Aevoe]

So who will win the battle?

The iM600. Oops. Was that out loud?

Design
The SX3000R is a rarity among iPod docks. Instead of opting for the parallel, iPod blocks the speaker format, the SX3000R stores the iPod on the side. And it's a refreshing effect in person.

The iM600 is understated minus the bright blue display that really spices up the design in the dark. And it has a real deal antenna, 1980s style, that stores away within the dock neatly.

Functions
Radio: Having no display, Kensington made a smart choice in displaying radio stations through the iPod itself. The iM600 uses its built-in display, but why not double the information as large as possible on the iPod?
The iM600 also features a built-in battery rated at 7 hours, TV out, USB in, and subwoofer out—meanwhile, the Kensington skimped on these extras.

Both docks will function as an alarm clock using the iPod's clock.

Sound

The Kensington SX3000R got our hopes up. Why? They put the iPod off to the side where it wouldn't block sound. But while playing the Barenaked Ladies song Pinch Me, we realized that the iPod's position was motivated by aesthetics, not audio.

Because the SX3000R, quite simply, doesn't sound very good. A balance of frequencies might be somewhere within sound field, but everything is so muffled that it can be tough to tell. The listening experience makes you wonder if an object is blocking the speaker, flattening the sound into something that doesn't warrant deep analysis.

The iM600 is not perfect, but definitely sounds a tier above the Kensington. The dock undoubtedly has more bass response that any portable system we've reviewed yet, even if it won't shake the floor. And most of all, the guitars, vocals and drums blend into a harmonious package. Acoustic was solid; electric shined. Yes, there is a faint static that audiophiles will notice during some songs (couldn't find the correlation here), and we wouldn't call the IM600's sound "crisp." But it's a solid performance nonetheless.

WINNER: Altec Lansing iM600
Maybe it's unfair to check street prices as opposed to retail, but given that both units can move for $135, this battle turned out to be a slaughter. The iM600 packs almost every feature was could ask for in a docking system, and its audio is decent to boot. The Kensington SX3000R loses in every category that counts, and simply is not the dock you want to buy when there are a slew of better options available for the money. – Mark Wilson

This time, we brought along a bag full of awesomely priced cables, mostly from Monoprice, that we were ready to run bandwidth tests on, side-by-side with Monster's finest (and most damned expensive) cables.

What were our findings?

1) At short distances up to 6ft (2 meters), you can pretty much get away with any cable. Monoprice cables kicked ass at the 6 foot length that mostly everyone uses.

Not all cables are the same, however, and in truth, it's the medium-priced cables that may be the real rip-off.

2) At longer distances, cheaper cable tends to choke up. A 720p signal will make it, but even today's standard 1080p signal can fry out inside of a long cable that isn't built as well. If you are trying to hook up a 1080p projector on your ceiling to a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, this is a concern.

The tests, which fired digital signal through the cable to synthesize high-definition video, can be divided into REAL-WORLD requirements (720p and 8-bit 60Hz 1080p) and FUTURE-WORLD requirements (12-bit 60Hz 1080p and even 12-bit 120Hz 1080p). Mind you, the future formats don't exist now, so they should only be a concern when you are buying cables you intend to keep for five years, such as those you want to build into a wall.

OK, you got the results, now, don't you want to see how the test was done, and see what we saw?

Look at the pic above. The box on the left is an Anritsu Pulse Pattern Generator. To simulate high-def video, it sends signal down one of three paths within an HDMI cable, so its signal at any given time is ONE-THIRD the bandwidth of that video format. The list of bandwidth tests we ran is as follows:

REAL WORLD
• 720p 8-bit 60Hz = 742 Mbps (x3)
• 1080p 8-bit 60Hz = 1.65 Gbps (x3)

FUTURE WORLD
• 1080p 12-bit 120Hz = 4.455 Gbps (x3)
• 1440p 12-bit 120Hz = 8.24 Gbps (x3)

When the signal was sent out over the cable, its performance was measured on a Tektronix DSA8200 Digital Serial Analyzer. The argument goes like this: it may all be 1's and 0's, but what is being sent over that cable is electric current. When too much data is sent over a shabby cable, the device on the other end can't tell what is a 1 and what is a 0. The end result is video that is either jittery, full of digital snow, or flat-out not there.

The Tektronix display shows two arcs, a high ridge that stands for the 1's and a low ridge that stands for the 0's. As bandwidth increases, you will see that the arcs get fuzzier, and at the failure point, there are too many 1's that look like 0's, and vice versa.

Bear in mind, in some cases, if the cable failed at one level, we didn't go on to the next. Likewise, if we knew it passed the higher test, we might not go on to a lower test.

Monster Cable 2-meter ($120)

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1440p - PASS

Monoprice 6ft HDMI 1.2a ($4.79)

REAL WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1440p - FAIL

Monoprice 6ft HDMI 1.3 Category 2 Certified (Price unavailable, but fairly cheap)

REAL WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1440p - FAIL

XtremeHD 2-meter HDMI 1.3 ($20)

REAL WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - FAIL

FUTURE WORLD 1440p - FAIL

Monoprice 6ft Heavy-Duty CL2 ($15.44)

REAL WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1440p - (CLOSE) FAIL

Monoprice 35-ft In-Wall CL2 ($35.17)

REAL WORLD 720p - PASS

REAL WORLD 1080p - FAIL

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - FAIL

Monster 10-meter ($230)

REAL WORLD 720p - PASS

REAL WORLD 1080p - PASS

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - FAIL

Monoprice 50-ft In-Wall CL2 ($53.64)

REAL WORLD 720p - PASS

REAL WORLD 1080p - FAIL

FUTURE WORLD 1080p - FAIL

You will notice that even the Monster 10-meter couldn't pass the Future World 1080p test. The Monster folks said they didn't have a 50-footer in the building that they could test with, but I suspect it would have done a little bit better than the Monoprice, possibly even carrying today's 1080p. But we did not test that.

Judging from these results, I would have to reiterate my original position, that it's best to skimp at short distances, but you don't want to be caught with the wrong cable installed in your walls. Even with the projector, it might be smart to buy a $30 cable first and see if it works, but be prepared, when upgrading your gear, to upgrade the cable too. Does it have to be Monster? Hell no, but you might have to pay something close to a Monster-sized price.

The truth is, the bigger rip-off appears to be the $20 XtremeHD cable. It didn't perform as well as stuff one-fifth the price. (No wonder they don't sell a 10-meter cable.) I would say beware of mid-priced cable of dubious origin. Our dealings with Monoprice lead us to believe that at least they know what they're selling, even at such a tremendous discount.

Stay tuned for HDMI Cable Battlemodo: The Truth About Monster, Part 3, where we try to match the laboratory results with basic, in-home testing. If the Digital Serial Analyzer said a cable fails, but it works just fine in my basement, maybe I'll have to call BS. – Wilson Rothman

Monster Cable [Gizmodo]

Email contests@gizmodo.com with "IPEVO Contest" in the subject and we'll pick a winner at random. Yep, no talent required this time. The standard Gawker contest rules apply, of course. Contest ends 6/20, so you've got a week to send in your entry.

Sponsored by IPEVO: "IPEVO is a Taiwan-based company that creates Internet devices to expand and extend the experience of web based services and applications."

For the uninitiated, T-Mobile @Home is a home Wi-Fi/Cellular router that routes your cellphone calls through your internet connection to T-Mobile and out to wherever you're dialing. It's useful for people who live in No Man's Land and can't get reception inside their houses. Also, when you're on Wi-Fi you don't use your cell minutes. – Jason Chen

Thanks Tipster!