wiring

I couldn't be at the Tuesday morning Apple launch event for the new MacBook and MacBook Pro systems, but I've had a chance to review the announcements.

Normally I focus on the technology in new products, but this time, I have to say my first impression is dominated by the appearance of these systems. These are some good-looking laptops.

The most dramatic change is the new display surround, black glass that goes right out to the edge of the upper case just like on an iPhone. The lower case also looks significantly cleaner now that the old gray … Read more

We all know that Apple is gathering the chattering classes together Tuesday in Cupertino, Calif., to unveil the latest MacBooks. But unlike many previous Apple product debuts, the Interwebs have been awash recently with reasonably believable-looking leaked spy shots of the laptops, or their component parts.

The latest comes from Chinese site MacX.cn, which purports to show the new aluminum chassis of the 13-inch MacBook. Interesting to note that the side view (pics are after the break) seems to omit the FireWire port currently found on the standard MacBook. … Read more

Tend to gesticulate? The iPoint Presenter might suit your communication style well. It's a completely contact-free input media device that lets you rotate virtual objects, press buttons, and change the size of onscreen images with simple hand gestures alone. No special gloves or sensory equipment needed.

Created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin, the iPoint Presenter can recognize eight fingers at a time--in real time. It's currently on display at Wired NextFest 2008, a showcase of global innovations that runs through October 12 in Chicago. … Read more

On today's show, we reveal our favorite fragrances, briefly touch on the new Apple offerings, disappear into e-Ink, rip into the Geek Squad and Microsoft's new "gurus," send text messages to inanimate household objects, and try to convince Wilson to take a shower in public in the name of animal rights.

Don't bust out that checkbook yet, my friends, contrary to popular belief, Natali Del Conte's hair is not on eBay...yet. We'll be the first ones to break that news, but until then you'll just have to listen to our show to get your NDC fix. Lots of news to talk about today, which we get to right after we guess each other's favorite eau de liquid smells. No surprise here, but Jeff's is the sweet scent of Natali's hair that he creepily compares to a cherry lollipop. Anyway, we also get the scoop on a few more tech-related gems, including a story about energy companies testing a program that will send you a text message on behalf of your thermostat if you forget to turn it off when you leave the house. Hey, I'm all for energy conversation, but are ya kidding me!? So now, on top of ignoring text messages from my close friends and family members, I have to deal with spam from my household appliances, too!? I guess I can see it being useful when I forget to turn off the oven, but I'd prefer to get the news by driving up to a burning apartment rather than getting a text from my oven that says "Hey, dummy--you forgot to turn me off, so now I'm spitting hot fire at all your physical possessions. See you at home!" No thanks, gas company, you can keep the service--I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Lime Wire LLC (the company) has announced a deal with The Orchard, a large digital distributor for independent artists and small labels. The deal will effectively double the amount of music available in the LimeWire Store to more than 2 million tracks.

I wrote about the store when Lime Wire first announced it a year ago, thinking that it was a possible exit strategy in case the major labels won their lawsuit against Lime Wire and forced the shutdown of its Gnutella-based file-sharing client. But this announcement seems to show that Lime Wire is taking the store seriously as an … Read more

In 2006, Wired magazine reporter Jeff Howe published a story about a phenomenon he'd been following in which the power of large numbers of people was being harnessed to make things happen that hadn't been possible before outside the auspices of corporations or other big institutions.

He called the phenomenon "crowdsourcing," and the term quickly caught on, joining others, like "tipping point," "wisdom of the crowds," "the long tail" as household phrases for the ways that things were changing all around us, often thanks to the democratizing reach of the … Read more

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has approved a new specification that gives support for bandwidth of up to 3.2Gbps--the standard that is used by Apple's FireWire and Sony's iLink, among others.

Most commonly called FireWire, it was initially intended as a general-use fast serial bus, but has found niches in attached storage and multimedia applications, primarily because of its guaranteed latency.

Like many standards, the issue for this specification--IEEE 1394-2008--is maintaining compatibility across different generations, and ensuring that the protocol keeps up with advances in hardware technique. Many implementations are still using the 400Mbps S400 … Read more

I am indebted to Wired for raising something very painful.

The hauteurs and auteurs of pornography are feeling the pinch.

And the pillars of the pornographic community (I am not sure if they have a Facebook group) are beginning to admit that it isn't just the economy that is squeezing their bottom lines.

Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News (a group thing that protects, so to speak, trade interests) identifies the web as a source of commercial agony.

"There's a battle with pirated or free material on the internet," he told Wired. "Much like … Read more

Obviously, it's been convenient to operate plug and play bus-powered peripheral devices that use USB and FireWire connections, since all you need is the device itself and one data cable that, once plugged in, also draws juice from the computer to feed the device. However, admittedly, that definitely is less convenient than no cable or plugging at all.

A consortium was established on July 17 in Tokyo to promote a radically new and exciting close-proximity wireless technology, called "TransferJet." This new technology enables a high speed data transmission rate of 560Mbps (by comparison, USB 2.0 has … Read more