What’s this sailing race about? The Transpac isn’t the biggest sailboat race, but it’s the longest of the two oldest. The first Transpac happened in 1906, less than a month after the great SF earthquake, forcing it to start from LA. From Wikipedia: In the 1975 movie Jaws, the character Matt Hooper, played by Richard…
Why a boat? Because the Pegasus Open 50, is laden with mechanical and material technology. And the captain is the inventor of the camphone and founder of Borland, Philippe Kahn. He’s liveblogging a race from California to Hawaii via Satellite. They’re sailing the Transpac, a classic race a little over 2000 miles from the coast…
Bruce Mahoney continues his tour of the Team Pegasus Open 50 Raceboat. If you like sailing and high performance vehicles, you’ll get something out of this video. Apologies again for the shakey cam. Didn’t have a wide enough angle on board that day, nor the mic range to make it work. Philippe Kahn founded Borland,…
Pegasus Team Operations Manager Bruce Mahoney continues his tour of the Open 50 race sailboat, picking up with how they mount the carbon fiber mast, the dagger boards, rigging material and sails. The boat crosses the starting line tomorrow! Apologies for the shakey camera. The Flip Mino’s short mic range, the wind, the size of…
This wooden, yet digital, concept ruler combines “values of a traditional ruler, with advantages of a digital interface.” I think it still needs lines, but how cool is it that it sets the zero point wherever you start measuring? [noquedanblogs via notcot]
A great cover by the Christian Science Monitor. I went back and forth a few times, and ended up being wrong. Which do you think is the meat-based contruction? The answer forthcoming on Monday. [BoingBoingGadgets]
Mobil delivered this rendering of Kiki, a Sony Ericsson phone with a projected display and um, presumably, somewhere, a keypad. I like green. People need to make more green handsets. [Mobil via Engadget]
Mobil’s dug up these photos of the XPERIA Rachael, supposedly their first Android phone. Exciting, since I love Sony Ericsson hardware. These things are kind of all starting to look the same, but it’s running the Snapdragon platform, meaning it could be 1GHz, and is rumored to have an 8MP imaging sensor. Let’s hope they’ve…
Hey, the iPhone 3GS has been jailbroken, through what looks like a web exploit. Warning: We haven’t tested this because we’re playing with fireworks. Use at your own risk. [Make It Rain via BBG]
The official Gizmodo raceboat, the Pegasus Open 50, was originally rigged for reliability for global cruising. Going from CA to HI in a race requires more power. Here’s a tour of the tech in the rigging, hull material and sails. Bruce Mahoney, who helps run the team, is the guy walking me through the boat’s…
Netbooks are netbooks. Usually based on Intel’s Atom chipset, and generally not that fast. What you gonna do? Well, I upgraded the SSD in my Hackintosh. Not just to bump the drive from 32 to 128GB, but for SPEED. The drive is one of few things easily upgradable on these devices. On the Dell Mini…
Philippe Kahn founded Borland, invented the Camphone, and decodes human motion. He’s also a fellow outdoorsman, splitting time skiing Tahoe and sailing in Santa Cruz. He’ll share his Transpac 2009 sailing race with us live from the Pegasus Open 50. https://gizmodo.com/fullpowers-motion-sensing-concept-knows-what-youre-doin-5271408 The Pegasus starts the 2009 race, from Los Angeles, CA to Honolulu, Hawaii, this…
North Korea’s aiming their test missile near Hawaii. The US military says they can protect the islands, and locals aren’t too worried, but if something happens, the thermal, shockwave and radioactive fallout will look something like this. The Carlos Labs Google Maps Mash up, which we’ve featured before, has been now updated with a simulation…
The new data and social network type gadget site, gdgt, is back up and fully operational. Here are our accounts. Add us! Brian, Jason, Wilson, Mark, Adam, Matt, John Herrman, Dan, and the Interns: Don and Quinton. [gdgt]
Sony’s cassette tape Walkman came to life in many shapes and forms through the years. Here are a few of the great, the important and sometimes plain weird Walkman models. The original TPS-L2 Walkman went on sale 30 years ago today, July 1st 1979, in Japan. It played stereo and had dual mini headphone jacks…
gdgt is a new gadget site that’s database driven. You pronounce it either g-d-g-t or “gadget”. I like it, mainly because I can track pieces of information about gadgets I own, but also tech I would like to have. See, here’s my list of gadgets. Since the database is user generated, I can’t wait to…
I like this NYTimes blog about happiness. Our relationship with our personal tech is complicated, but overall, do you think we’re better or worse off for being so addicted to our gadgetry? Does your phone help you remember things you might have forgotten, and take photos of memorable events? Does it piss you off when…
The 1969 Kitchen Computer by Honeywell was not just a fancy cutting board. It was meant to store recipes, even recommending meals from ingredients on hand. The problem is, you had to know binary to use it. The machine’s designers assumed that housewives would do all the cooking, and yet, also assumed they’d be open…
This video explains more about the SAGE system I wrote about last week, the huge Airforce used in the 50s to the 80s to make us feel safe from supersonic Soviet bombers. The video here has a lot of information. If you’re short on time, I recommend watching the simulation of how the system would…
Reposted in MJ’s Memory: At first I thought my first was a cassette single of Bel Biv Devoe’s Poison I bought from the Bergen Mall, but then I realized I had a record of Michael Jackson’s Thriller at 5. I was only a little bit older than when I confused my father’s records for frisbees…
