The Big Think

I saw this PDA at Fry’s today and fell in love. It has 90% of the things I want in a PDA. Just need to lose about $150 before I can bite. The only thing it’s “missing” is more storage and a phone. I’m unreasonable in my expectations of a PDA right now; it’ll probably take another 5 years before my “perfect PDA” is on the market. I’d like a Palm OS (okay, OS X would be great but it’s not gonna happen) PDA with a tri-band phone, Bluetooth, 802.11(x), large color screen and around 100gb of storage. It should do voice recording, at least 2mpxl camera, MP3/iTunes, and have decent online speeds. Oh, and it should cost less than $200.
I can dream, can’t it?
As crazy as this sounds right now, how long do you think it’ll be before it’s on the market? I say 5 years at the absolute outside, 18 months minimum. The storage capacity is the main thing right now. If they can get a 100gb tiny hard drive for a decent price it’ll open up the market for all kinds of small devices.
This brings up the conversation that Giles and I periodically have about consumers wanting more/faster/bigger of what they already have. 20 years ago everybody wanted a faster text-based user interface (DOS). They didn’t see graphical GUI’s coming and thus had no conception of what they really wanted. I, for one, would love to be surprised by technology and dismiss my perfect PDA in favor of the next-big-thing, but barring that, faster/better/bigger/cheaper will have to do.
Oh, and I wouldn’t mind strapping the (hopefully waterproof) thing to my wrist and wearing it as a watch, kinda like Leela’s “Wrist-lo-jackimater”.

link: I’m not saying the world is a simple place, but hindsight is 20/20 and nobody can see the future.

via yahoonews: The privately-backed SpaceShipOne suborbital rocket plane made its second powered flight today.
Built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, the piloted vehicle was powered by a hybrid rocket motor to over 105,000 feet. The engine burned for 40 seconds, zipping to Mach 2, or two times the speed of sound, according to a source that witnessed the test flight high above Mojave, California skies. SpaceShipOne’s second successful powered flight was piloted by Peter Siebold.

This is unbelievably cool news. The X-Prize is within grasp. Unfortunately, it may be a race to the finish as the 10 million dollar prize expires as of the end of this year. Look to see a bunch of launches in the next few months. Exciting!

This is pretty cool.

via The Bleat:I wasn’t back in my old room, because it was never my room to begin with… Now it’s the mausoleum of my childhood, frozen in time – the furniture, the books, the trophies, mementoes, all that stuff that makes you feel like a stranger in your own skin, all the stuff you accumulated before you left home and started all over.

A custom iPod Mini installation. Very nice.

There’s something I really like about these 100sq ft. modular dwellings. Cheap, easy to build, and very practical. My mind whirs when I think of the possibilities.

43 years ago today Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history by being the first human being in space.