Aaaand we can't not do a proper sizemodo, naturally:

Click on this image to see the full picture.

When JJ Abrams said that he wanted to put some Star Wars into Star Trek, apparently it also applied to the scale of spaceships (and matching viewscreens.) And while the new Enterprise doesn't even reach half of the 1,600 meters—that's a mile long—of an Imperial Star Destroyer, it's still amazingly big compared to the 288 meters of the old Enterprise. Maybe now you would be able to take down an Star Destroyer with a couple of these.

The battle I would really want to see now, however, is not the old Star Trek vs Star Wars (we already know who would win that one.) No, you know what I want to see.

Yes, Starbuck vs Uhura. In a chocolate pudding pit.

Maybe Galactica vs Enterprise too, but that's a distant second. [Thanks to David B. from Bad Robot Productions]

UPDATE: Since we did the original ISS comparison, the specifications for the new Battlestar Galactica have changed. After the end of the series, one of the visual effects guy shared information about the actual size of Adama's new ship. It measures 1,438.64 meters. Almost a mile, so it's bigger than the new Enterprise and less than 200 meters shy of an Imperial Star Destroyer. I changed the graphic to display the old Galactica, which has the correct size. [Thanks to the readers who pointed this out]

While the Kindle may be good for magazines and journals—although the lack of color is a major drawback for me—it will be difficult for it to compete with the pleasure of having yourself buried under that five tons of giantastic paper sheets that some people like to call the New York Times. But then again, newspapers and magazines are dying, aren't they?

What do you think? Would you change your Sunday paper for a Kindle? What about your favorite bathroom magazine?

HTC says this phone will have a VERY consumer friendly pricepoint, and though it may not look quite as slick or customized as the HTC Touch Pro 2, it's powerful enough to let WinMo 6.1 move at lightning speed. The JOG BALLS feels exactly the same as that on the G1 (and the Beautiful Black berry BOLD), and is really the best way to navigate a non touch interface these days, hands down. Also, it's pretty thin for the type of phone it is. I think it has an eating disorder.

The other thing I really liked was the Inner Circle feature. While it wasn't fully operational, the idea that it has it's own dedicated button on the QWERTY keyboard to bring up emails from preferred contacts is pretty effective and neat. It's a good idea people will actually use.

The only downer? It uses that same annoying proprietary G1 port for headphones and audio. Seriously, that thing needs to go.

Anyways, the phone is ramping up for a Spring/Summer 2009 release. If you're looking for something straightforward and affordable, keep your eyes peeled for this.

We compared a pack of cards, matchbox, the 2nd gen iPod Shuffle and the new iPod Shuffle (in that order) to give you a better idea. You'll notice that while the new Shuffle is taller than the old Shuffle, repositioning those controls to the headphones bought a lot of space in every other way. We're also guessing that the new clip has been streamlined a bit to make the svelte 1.8x0.7x0.3-inch body possible. [Sizeeasy]

Right off the bat, the second-gen Kindle is significantly thinner than the original. At only .36-inches, it is nearly half the size—and around 25% thinner than an iPhone. It's also half-an-inch taller (the screen is still 6") but it weighs in at 10.2 ounces—just a shade lighter than the 10.3 ounce original.

It may not have shed much weight, but 10.2 ounces is still comparable to a traditional paperback book—and it's still quite an accomplishment given the 7-fold increase in storage and 25% increase in battery life. [Amazon]

We are so used to the International Space Station that we don't give its massive scale a second thought. I, for one, took it for granted until a newly-released NASA photograph reminded me that this thing is huge. So huge that I fired up Photoshop and did an illustration comparing it to a Colonial Viper Mk1, a Corellian corvette, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A, and the new Battlestar Galactica. Check both the high resolution sizemodo and the amazing NASA photo after the jump.

<<< Click on the sizemodo to see the high definition image*

Here's the NASA photography, showing the scale of an astronaut against a small section of the International Space Station.

I don't know about you, but this one really make me go oh-ah. Maybe it's all a fake and that guy is a Lego Minifig.

ISS Size:

Mass: 300,214 kg (661,857 lb) (June 18, 2008)
Length: 58.2 m (191 ft) along truss (February 22, 2007)
Width: 44.5 m (146 ft) from Destiny to Zvezda
Height: 27.4 m (90 ft) (February 22, 2007)

Solar arrays span: 73.15 m (240 ft) (February 22, 2007)

* The sizemodo shows the final completed ISS. The scale is 1 pixel = 0.5 meters. Scaled and measured with Photoshop's measurement tool.

You know the Envy is well designed when you experience the initial unboxing. Generally, we're bored by the very notion of "unboxing" these days, but word is that Voodoo's chief designer is a packaging fanatic, you can totally tell by the elegantly nested, extra-heavy packaging that so carefully holds such a light, thin little notebook.

Once you have it out of the box and ready for action, you really notice how closely the Envy resembles a miniature black MacBook Pro, with a few distinct design choices to separate itself from an Apple: It's got a continuous glass face with embedded screen, so the whole front except for the webcam is seamless. And it's made of carbon fiber, which means it can be thinner (at the widest point) than a MacBook Air, but have a removable battery like a MacBook Pro.

The carbon fiber, along with a rather noisy fan, lets heat dissipate easily, so there's no sudden burning sensation on your legs when you're using it on your lap. I don't know if carbon fiber is a better sound resonator than aluminum, but the Envy's speakers sound great for being so small. They're not just better than MacBook Air's mono speaker but MacBook Pro's stereo speakers too. The carbon fiber is slick but smudgy. It didn't take long to make it look used, though a quick wipe will make it good as new—for like five minutes.

Sizemodo: Voodoo Envy 133 vs MacBook Air

To put it as bluntly as Voodoo boss Rahul Sood puts it, "This laptop is not a gaming product." It's not going to play Crysis at all, though it might achieve other, lesser games with the settings dialed down. You can tell it's not a gaming laptop because of the fact that Vista gives it a 3.1 rating out of 5 due to its integrated graphics and shared video memory; that PCMark gave it 2100 (the world's hottest machines top 15000); 3D Mark won't run because Envy's nice 13.3" 1280x800 screen is nevertheless too low rez to test; and it's not covered with flared plastic and blinky LEDs that go from green to red as you take hits during a game.

As you might know, the basic design was Intel's. The original Metro concept had some shortcomings though. It was made of plastic and had some questionable heat management. "There's no way you could sell the Metro because it would fall apart," says Sood.

Besides heat management, the key was to make the Metro design capable of carrying a removable battery that is nonetheless super thin. And it's a good thing, because the battery life on the Envy isn't great. In the most extreme situation, where it was powering the outboard DVD player and playing a movie, I could only get it to run for an hour before completely crapping out. That means no watching movies on airplanes, I'm afraid. In other less strenuous tests, the battery dwindled fast. Let me make this clear: The battery life on this baby sucks.The DVD player connects in an ingenious way. It uses an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Since eSATA doesn't yet have a bus-powered spec yet, the Voodoo guys figured out a way to draw power from the USB part of the jack, while doing data i/o through the faster eSATA jack. Sood says that they actually patented this technique and that's good for Voodoo, since it's certainly bound to catch on.

The little laptop even has an ExpressCard slot, which makes up for its lack of SD card reader—SanDisk makes a very nice multi-card reader for ExpressCard. It also means it won't take up a USB port to run a 3G modem, if you can get an ExpressCard version instead.

As you may recall from the launch, it has a few other gimmicks, like a slightly oversized power brick that, for its bulk, contains a mini Wi-Fi router, so you can plug Ethernet directly in. It also ships with a smart HDMI-to-VGA dongle for people who want to use it in presentations but don't want to convince corporate IT dudes that HDMI is in fact a viable video standard.

It also has a pseudo-multi-touch "pinch" feature like on a MacBook Air (or an iPhone), but instead of a smooth flow, I noticed it was kinda jerky. It could still come in handy, but to be honest, I am not sure how handy the Air's multi-touch is at this point. I consider all of this proof of concept for now.

Speaking of the trackpad, it's supposed to lock down when you have two hands on the keyboard. I don't know if I have funny shaped hands, but from time to time, I still find the trackpad acting up while I type, executing weird app and system requests, but given the fact that I have typed an awful lot with my hands touching much of the trackpad as I went along, I can easily say the auto-safety works 99% of the time.

The gimmick I am most interested in is the lightweight Linux OS called Voodoo IOS. It's the Splashtop instant-boot OS we've started to see in other places as well, and having finally sat down and played with it, I see a lot of promise. At startup, you can select to enter Windows or choose Skype, media player, web browser or photo viewer to take you into the VIOS environment. I was eager to try this out and can say that it works as billed, though I'm still divided on its ultimate practicality.

It is very handy to hop into VIOS instead of launching Windows when you want to do something minor, like launch a web browser or Skype, but I am vexed by the fact that, to enter VIOS, you have to shut down Vista and reboot—rather than choose it as a reboot option from Vista. Once in VIOS, the apps have certain limitations: The Linux version of Skype can't support the built-in webcam, copying photos from a memory card to the photo browser seemed impossible (if I'm wrong I'll settle for unintuitive), and the music program worked but just made me miss iTunes. The browser was fine—a Linux version of some Mozilla variant, if I'm not mistaken. Over all, it seemed like a pretty nice Linux environment, clean and fun, with quirky interface features like a flaming Voodoo face signifying a short wait. Who knows, it may even be a fertile ground for savvier software tweakers to play around in. Update: Just got a couple of nuggets regarding VIOS/Splashtop: Its hacker friendly open-source info is here, and it's up to Voodoo (and HP) to update the Skype on the VIOS in order for the webcam to work, so get crackin' Voodoo!

Voodoo IOS app walkthrough

Overall, I can safely say that this was the most satisfying experience I've had with a Vista notebook, and I've tried quite a few. Even while I was prepping this, my Mac started acting funny and I realized that if I had to switch to it full time, it would be far from disastrous. The only reason besides the questionable battery life that I am not gushing is that this laptop costs a hell of a lot of money. The fairly basic config with an 80GB 4200rpm hard drive that I tested starts at $2,450, and the 64GB SSD versions don't even kick in till $2,900. (The most barebones unit available is $2,100.) If these babies could come in even $500 lower, I could see a value proposition, but as it is, it's too high a price, especially when something this nice is still so far from perfection. [Voodoo Envy 133]

Meet Dorothy. At 150 inches diagonal, she’s the world’s largest plasma screen and the biggest direct-view TV ever made, built (and named) by Panasonic. We got to play with her recently and as you've seen, it was mind-meltingly awesome. Even though firsthand experiences with Dorothy are akin to filling a leaf blower with nitrous oxide to jet-huff directly into your brain, Dorothy's backstory is almost as incredible, especially when it comes to manufacturing, shipping and yes, managing all the electricity needed to fire her up. So even though you will absolutely never own one—except for you Giz-reading NBA stars and platinum-selling rappers—the story of the world's most advanced television is a thrill, and serves as a crystal ball to the future of all TV. Come, talk to her. She's intimidating, but it'll be good for you.

Why "Dorothy"?
There are currently five 150-inch Panasonic plasmas in existence—and a sixth for CES 2009 is currently being assembled. They’ve been named, appropriately enough, like hurricanes—starting with A and working down. Dorothy’s number 4, hence the D.

Why 150 inches?
It’s all about the upper limits of the manufacturing process. Panel factories crank out the largest single piece of “mother glass” they possibly can, so that they can cut more large TVs per pane of manufactured glass. The ultimate size of a piece of mother glass is limited by the glass’s strength and uniformity—how large the thing can get without cracking. Panel makers will always be pushing this boundary, because the more 50-inch TVs you can get out of each single assembly-line run, the more money you can make on them even if they're selling at lower prices in stores.
Panasonic’s previous biggest piece of mother glass was 103 inches (remember?), from which four 50-inch plasmas could be cut. Their new manufacturing plant, Amagasaki 5 in Japan, has pushed the max to 150 inches—enough glass to birth nine 50-inch plasmas. Dorothy’s as big as she is because she literally swallowed nine TVs. When manufacturing evolves further, creating even larger panes of mother glass, you could see larger trade-show sets, provided they fit through the convention-center doors. 103 inches, how quaint. And look at that lil' 42-incher, looking fit for bathroom viewing only by comparison.

What’s the resolution?
Typically called 4K, it's resolution is 3996x2160. Even though you could technically call this 2160p, it's important to recognize that it's four times as tight as 1080p. Think four 1920x1080 panels Voltroning together to make something that's 8 megapixels, as opposed to the best current TVs' 2 megapixels. The annoying thing is that the industry went from measuring vertical resolution—720p and 1080p—to horizontal resolution—2K and 4K. (More on that here.)

As a result, watching a 1080p Blu-ray disc upscaled on Dorothy is akin to watching a standard-def DVD upscaled on your HDTV. As you can see in the shot below, the upscaler uses two pixels to render a one-pixel wide line from a test disc. But at Dorothy’s scale, it’s less about spotting compression artifacts, which are most visible when you’re close enough to induce nausea anyway. It’s about getting your face blown off.

How’s it stack up to Pioneer’s Kuro, one of the top plasmas in the game?
As far as motion-resolution goes—the all-important ability to maintain crisp images while they’re in motion on the screen—it's actually better. According to HD Guru Gary Merson (who was more interested in running his calibration discs on the 150 than sticking with us for some Counter Strike, God bless ’im), the 150-incher, even as a prototype, scored a resolution of 920 lines on a 1080i signal. Pioneer’s ’08 Kuros, the next best, scored 900. Our bet is that Dorothy can't best the Kuro in the contrast department, but as you can see from all of our shots, it's no slouch. Check out more performance specs in Gary’s 125-TV mega-guide. Below: Gary testing motion resolution.

How much power does she suck down, and at what cost?
Dorothy is addicted to raw electricity—we’re talking two dedicated 15-amp, single-phase, 208-volt lines which produce around 3,000 watts on average. Dorothy peaks at around 7,000 watts of direct consumption. Not exactly EnergyStar.

If I plugged Dorothy in at my apartment (that is, after removing my second-floor balcony door and window and much of the exterior wall while at it, and hiring a crane to bring the TV in), Dorothy’s juice habit would run me around $1.50 per hour of use, at ConEd’s current price of 22 cents per kilowatt-hour. So, after renting the Godfather Blu-ray set, factor in about $15 more in electricity charges for watching the whole thing.

How much heat does the thing put off?
We were expecting getting close to Dorothy was going to feel like putting our faces in a toaster oven. Even standard-size Kuros can feel a little warm. But surprisingly, up front, the heat was far from extreme. It very well could be channeled out the back, but we didn’t see any industrial-grade heat sinks behind her, either, or hear any fans blowing away. (Note: We're not allowed to show photographs of Dorothy's rear, though we did have a peek.)

How much does she weigh?
Around 1,700 pounds not including the stand. For comparison, an actual Mini Cooper with Adam in the driver’s seat weighs about 2,800 pounds.

How does Dorothy get around?
With great care and difficulty. After her inception at Amagasaki 5, Dorothy and her sisters were tested then sent on the trade-show circuit. Unlike the 103, they’re too big even for wooden crates. All that protects Dorothy and her sisters from the elements are the thin membranes of bubble wrap and Styrofoam wrapped around them, and the tarp draped over the open shipping cage. That’s all. Here's a fun fact: Only two 150-inchers can fit in a single 747 cargo hold at a time.

Although we saw a 150-incher at CES last January, Dorothy’s first trip was to IFA in Berlin this September. Afterward, she headed for Panasonic’s North American HQ in Secaucus, NJ where we got the chance to meet. She’s due to appear on Wall Street today (unfortunate timing for the poor girl) for the official US debut, then on to trade shows in Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong before returning home again to Japan.

Thanks for the facts, but what was that about a "mind-meltingly awesome" experience again? Any way to demonstrate that, say with a video of Gran Turismo 5's in-car view?
Why yes we can, and we'll throw in the 42-inch steering wheel for free:

There's more where that came from: check out more hands-on 150-inch action here and here.

How big is too big? That's the question that you inevitably ask yourself once you spend any amount of time with Panasonic's new 150-inch plasma TV prototype. We visited it in Panasonic's towering warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey last Friday, running it through its paces with 4K footage, Blu-ray movies and Playstation 3 games. After spending a day with it, was it the type of thing I honestly wanted to set up in my living room?

Maybe. Maybe not. The standards that we use to measure other TVs don't apply here. Have you ever seen a TV taller than yourself? A TV that uses more energy than your washer and dryer? A TV that needs to be carried around on a forklift? I'm guessing you haven't. This thing is in a category all its own.

Man, is it impressive. If you stand within a few feet of it, it fills your entire field of vision, quickly making you motion sick if you're playing video games or watching a movie with lots of action. Even standing 20 feet away, you still feel like the TV is the only thing in the room. It's a 4K set, so if you've got the proper ultra-HD footage pumping into it, it makes 1080p look like a second-rate resolution, but even with 1080p, it's absolutely stunning.

Iron Man looked like he was going to jump out of the TV. Robert Downey, Jr.'s baby blues were the size of watermelons in anything closer than a medium shot. Everything was just so big. Seeing a shark leap fully out of the water to devour a seal in Planet Earth becomes even more mindblowing when the shark approaches life size.

And video games? Forget about it. You haven't lived until you've played Call of Duty with life-sized enemies. As I decimated Mahoney over and over again (note to Mahoney: you suck), I felt my hands getting slick with sweat on the controller, my head whipping back and forth to try to see him around corners. My body felt a dissonance because I wasn't moving my legs or having my body jolted with recoil from my automatic weapon.

I've played video games on big TVs before. I visited Panasonic last year to do similar, uh, "tests" on their 103-inch plasma. And while that was awesome, it still felt like playing games and watching movies on a really big TV. The 150 transcends regular TV to become something more. It's like something out of a sci-fi movie, a living wall, a form of primitive virtual reality. It's so overwhelming that you can't really fathom putting it in your house because you can't see it fitting into any kind of reality you inhabit.

Inside the warehouse, we placed a 42-inch plasma next to it that looked pathetic, like something you'd put over your toilet to watch SportsCenter while you take a leak. I wanted to put it in my pocket. Even the 103-incher looked sad and small next to it. And trust me, a 103-inch TV doesn't look sad or small in too many situations.

If this were a true review, I'd have to complain that, since a 4K TV does to 1080p what your new HDTV does to standard-def, you're bound to watch a lot of crappy looking TV on this. If 1080p looks bad, think about all of the channels that come through in standard def. And if you're planning on streaming Netflix movies via your Xbox onto this TV, be prepared for digital artifacts the size of your head.

But you know what? This TV isn't designed for you to put in your living room. Sorry. It's a TV from the future, generously time-teleported back to the present by our friends at Panasonic. You aren't going to hook a VCR up to this thing, and neither are they; it is designed to run with precision-mastered footage, and our current lack of worthy video doesn't diminish the ridiculous potency of the thing.

Believe it or not, Panasonic will begin selling the 150-inch plasma sometime next year, probably for about twice as much as the $70,000 103-incher. Will it be snapped up by anyone? Probably. There are always sultanates and NBA stars looking to have the biggest and most expensive TV in the world, and this definitely fits that bill. But again I'll ask: Is it something normal people would benefit from having in their living room?

I'd say no, but not out of broke resentment and the fact that this would quadruple my energy bill and require me to knock down most of the walls of my home to even get it inside. I don't think people should put this in their living rooms because, when you get down to it, this isn't a TV. I don't want to imagine people watching Two and a Half Men on it. To check the weather on The Weather Channel on this thing would be an act approaching sacrilege. It's more than a TV: it's a glimpse into the future, it's a brazen display of hubris and overkill, and it's a visceral, skin-searing experience. It belongs on spaceships and in museums, not in living rooms. It's only right.

[Apple]

Yeah, we know—"video or it didn't happen," right? Well, we're working on it. Jeez, give us a break guys, Mr T smashed up our offices and the cleanup is immense. Nevertheless, the mammoth mobile totes a working internet connection of sorts and an onboard camera, but it completely lacks a battery, as Mr Tan couldn't build one large enough—what a slacker. The humango-handset relies on a mains outlet for power, and a local journalist verified its functional state by sending SMS messages and making a call.

The project took him 6-months to complete, and his wife was said to be livid with the racket he was making whilst putting it all together. Mind you, if our partners were busy constructing the BFG's cellphone, and they carelessly omitted the vibration function, we wouldn't be best pleased either. [Ananova via textually]

There's no accelerometer and website viewing is landscape only (conversely, navigation is portrait only). No pinching or pulling, either, you tap a zoom button multiple times to get the level you want. Bleh. It tries to make up for being less dynamic with a mode that lets you pan through a site by moving the phone around, using the camera as the sensor. But, it didn't quite work, at least not for Giz, which loaded painfully slow, despite the 3G connection.

Haptic feedback has a lighter touch than the Voyager, though when you scroll through a list, it does this weird undulating vibration wave throughout the entire phone, which is both neat and slightly unnerving. Since it's so beta (dare I say buggy?), it's hard to gauge its true iPhone-killing potential right now, but we'll be keeping our eye on it. (Props to Dave Zatz for letting us jack his iPhone for the size-off.)

I'm still on the fence as to what defines portability. The air pitches it as thinness and weight, and does so well. But the 12-inch powerbook and the Sony Vaio TZ feel smaller. They might have smaller keyboards and screens, but as for throwing them into a man purse or small bag, the units with smaller screens seems a lot easier to tote. But moving from room to room with it, carrying the Air with one hand, it's clear that this is the sturdiest and easiest inner-house haul.

[Sizeasy]