A cute invention!  This may just win a “cute-see” award soon.  The idea is described below.  While this may well be a “noble” process, for city-planners/engineers this may be a nightmare.  If this does spread flower power in the city, all the randomness would soon be a mess.  But hey, I like the idea… Perhaps this is much suited for the country instead?  I just think that cities are much better off with “pocket gardens” or “rooftop greens”.

Seeds are co-mingled with a bubble mixture and upon pedaling to your destination , you release the floating seeds which land in cracks and crevices throughout the city streets. Over time, the seeds grow into flowers and plants to create a green “fringe” to our sidewalks and streets.

Using natural ingredients; vegetable based soap and seeds, combine together to make a dissolving “nugget”. The resulting mixture resides in a reservoir inside Blooms aluminum housing. The housing is attached to the lower frame near the rear tire, similar to a exhaust pipe. Upon pedalling, air enters the front of Bloom and spins a pinwheel inside which picks up a small drop of the seed/bubble mixture and blows a bubble carrying a seed out the back as “exhaust”.

Our inspiration comes from the tale of Johnny Appleseed, where he would spread seeds everywhere he went planting apple trees for future generations.

I’ve had 3G on my Nokia N95 enabled since I got it – which is about a month or two ago now. I was thus surprised to learn that the iPhone didn’t include this much faster way to connect to the Internet. Consequently, I wasn’t exactly surprised when Steve Jobs big announcement turned out to be exactly that; 3G for the iPhone. Does it live up to the hype though?

Naturally, the big improvement is in download speed – now you can get access to The App Store much more quickly and get those applications on to your phone in a faster manner. It is significantly improved over the old ‘EDGE’ connection. Also included now is a GPS so you’ll be able to find your way around – again, much like the Nokia N95.

The physical size of the phone is slightly up – it is a little thicker at just a shade over 12mm. A bigger change is the new silky black that’s on the back of the phone. Let it never be said that Apple makes ugly products.

Other than that, battery life has gone up by a few hours – always a nice improvement for any redeveloped phone. There’s also the opportunity to ‘geotag’ your photos to your location. It’s quite a cool feature but I’m not sure if you’re going to use it a whole lot.

It’s great that the iPhone is now available free on contract, as well as the prices being slashed for those wanting to purchase it separately. You’ve still got the 8 and 16GB versions to choose from too, so there’s a phone for you however much you’re looking to spend. You still get that lovely touch screen and the 2 megapixel camera – I’m surprised that they didn’t beef that up to be honest.

Overall, the iPhone is nice, but it isn’t worth getting upset if you have the ‘old’ version. If, however, you’ve wanted one for a while, this could well be the right time to take the plunge. It is available in store from 11th July across the UK.

The Iron Key just does all the protection out-of-the-box with a HUGE PLUS.  This thumb drives hold up to 4 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password.

It’s super protected to the point that if it detects any malicious intent on its data IT WILL SELF-DESTRUCT!  Talk about protection, eh? 

Sure… passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It’s built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he’d more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they’d be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can’t get inside.

I’ve been storing several personal and extremely personal stuff on my Sandisk Cruzers and PY thumb drives all these years that I sometimes am very wary of someone picking it up and hacking it to get to my files.  The Iron Key seems a great solution, at least for me.

The Iron Key USB sports the following features:

- Fast 30MBPS Read, 20MBPS Write
- Drive contents encrypted with AES CBC-Mode Encryption
- Onboard IronKey Password-manager keeps all your internet passwords safe
 -Secure version of Firefox included that encrypts all your web-surfing traffic
- Encased in a potted metal case, not plastic, one of the strongest USB keys around
- Exceeds MIL-STD-810F military waterproofing standards
- The encryption chip self-destructs if an invasive attack is detected
- If your Ironkey is lost, you can restore from a secure backup to a new Ironkey in minutes
- Dual channel SLC NAND Flash for high-quality and read/write speeds
- Windows XP and Windows Vista only, but Mac and Linux drivers are in development

Techy stuffOnce configured, the frame can be left to operate in a completely stand alone mode. It supports WEP or WPA encryption and has fully featured TCP/IP setup supporting DCHP and manual IP. (By the way, if you don’t know what this stuff means, don’t worry, it’s all easy to sort out and set up.)

E-MailOnce the photo frame is online, it gets its own dedicated email address that anyone you share it with can send photos to. You can secure this by only allowing pictures from specific email addresses to be displayed. So don’t worry – your Wi-Fi picture frame isn’t going to try to sell you Viagra!

Displaying PhotosSimply email any photo to the frame. It checks for new email every few minutes and puts any pictures it receives into rotation in a slideshow. It functions in the same way when receiving photos via a Flickr or Photobucket feed. You can also add or delete photos directly via the web-based control panel.

Specifications

• eStarling 8″ Widescreen features widescreen aspect ratio (800×600 resolution)
• Innoloux panel used to ensure highest level of clarity
• Black Piano Finish
• Memory Size: On-board FLASH memory 128M
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with Support for WEP encryption
• MMC/SD/MS/CF 4in1 card slot
• Views JPEG files
• External 120V/240V AC Adapter

A friend YM’ed me yesterday to tell me that they’ve adopted a pet puppy from the city pound.  The family is all excited about spending their very first day with “Spots”, his children were very delighted to just run with Spots all around the yard.  Well, that happy time is long over, barely 24 hours at that when Spots began leaving “little gifts” to clean.  It takes some genuine loving to adopt a puppy.  It’s a great commitment… for the parents!

Sent him another email just now that the next close thing to Spots is just nearly as good.  Welcome Wrex The Dawg, saw this toy from GeekAlerts.

Wrex The Dawg is wacky, fun & near to the real thing with all its antics and fake growls.  Let me share with you some of its features:

Stuff like: Rubbing his robo-ass across the floor like a bad dog, fake peeing with funny sound effects, sneezing, and slot machine eyes that look help a whole lot with the cartoon feel.

You can even turn him into a cat, which he does pretty convincingly. Put him on guard duty and he’ll act like a guard dog. The remote is styled like an oversize industrial remote for some reason. Pretty cool stuff. I would say he’s a cut above most “dog” robots.

I was a little surprised when I saw this pic at BoingBoing, but I must also tell you that what followed after that was a wide smile.  Like this… :-)  It seems that nobody can limit creativity these days.  The picture you’re viewing above is an actual PC which has the case of an actual Microwave.  Pretty cool I must say. 

The LCD cover (which serves as the PC’s screen) was modified to snap perfectly into the microwave’s case.  Under the hood reveals a “crammed-up” area that wasn’t just meant for perfect component cooling like what the standard PC cases offers.  This may mean you cannot use this for a long time, unless you are in a cool room.  Here’s the photo of its guts:

I must say that it’s a guaranteed head-turner, would you agree?  A concept project by CaseArts.

This tech gadget shouts out “cool”!

Thinkgeek gives us a “bored” meeting gadget-o-fun.  Let me just create some other scene and probably send someone’s proposal to sky heaven.  Ok, picture this, you’re on a date and you’re just about to pop the question of the century “I love you, will you marry me?”.  You’ve doodled these words and have scanned this into LightTalk II.  Now you pretend to be a great magician, go down on one knee and wave the “magic” wand.  Out comes the question in mid-air, to your girlfriend’s shriek of admiration. 

I think she’ll pull out a hankee, tears in the eyes… musters the words “yes”.

It could happen!  Hey, that’s original!

Retails for $39.99 availalbe at thinkgeek.com .

Here’s the tech stuff:

Here’s a great way to wake up every morning, and it’s not your usual alarm clock at all.  A GadgetShop.com find, this slick and stylish Retro Alarm Clock carries what I say is a 1-2-3 power punch for the geekiest person in you.  Too your geek friends call it your regular IPod dock, to mom… hey, say it’s an alarm clock.  Either way you’d surely hear those ooohhs and aaahhhhs of admiration.

You can configure it to wake you up to your favorite tune.  “Say a Prayer” perhaps?  Or rock it to Madonna’s latest hit… you choose.   Once you plug this into this “dock” the IPod quickly goes into clock mode.  It will automatically charge it for you as well.  How’s that for a feature?

Omni directional speakers, analog alarm sounds and/or your iTunes favorites… you’re the boss.  Available in ebony black, metal blue or cool silver colors, pink… or white.

Retails for about US$70… not bad eh?

The release of the EEE PC 900 is designed to go some way to address the (albeit minor) criticisms of the original. Previously, the seven inch screen managed only 800×480 resolution, whilst the new model comes with a nine inch screen with a display of 1024×600 – once again lovely widescreen but with that bit more room to use.

Of course, another issue was storage space of the original. The 4 gig was fine for work, but anything more than that and you could have been struggling. This time round, you get 20GB of solid state hard drive to play with. That means just as before you’ll get a machine that boots incredibly quickly but this time you can stick on films etc and not worry about where that next essay will be saved.

Extras include a 1.1megapixel camera and Wi-fi built in. This is great for your home network and if you’ve got a small study then this would make an excellent addition. Just as previously you’ll get Linux on there for free – something I’d say is perfectly adequate for purpose. However for the die-hards who want Windows, it is possible and it works very well indeed.

Battery life remains about three hours – not too shabby at all for such a useful little machine. The only issue I found was that the keyboard remains relatively small – not too great for my speed typing to be honest! In terms of value for money, you won’t find many other workhorses out there that are so reasonably priced. In fact, I’m beginning to think that everyone should have one…

Verdict: 9/10