water

It's probably not a good sign that the first thing people ask me when they notice I'm holding an iPhone 4 is always something about how I deal with the reception issues. I've said here before that I have yet to experience dropped calls or any other issues related to "Antennagate" (yeesh, will we--as a society--ever get over the whole "Whatevergate" meme?), but that's probably largely just luck; maybe I'm fortunate that where I go in my daily life is covered pretty well by AT&T. I suspect I could be a rare exception.

The interesting thing to me is that the reception issues and "Death Grip" have been all over the news here in the U.S., but reports trickling in from other countries are quite the opposite. An Australian publication, The Daily Telegraph, gave a very positive review to Apple's iPhone 4 today saying finally about the reception issues, "Is the antenna an issue? No it's not. Have I dropped calls? No, I have not." Another story out of Norway (via AppleInsider) had similar results, with the writer concluding that the issues are more about weak U.S. mobile networks than they are about the iPhone 4 itself.

So my question is, even though the "Death Grip" might reduce your signal by a bar or two, if Apple had announced a deal with Verizon (or some other carrier) at launch, would we even be talking about "Antennagate?" I think I know what Steve Jobs would say if he thought nobody else was listening.

This week's iPhone AppsGate includes a fun tool to make stop-motion movies and a water-racing game sequel that is a huge improvement over the original.… Read more

Aqueduct takes a page from those popular classic pipeline-type puzzle games, bringing the same challenging gameplay to your touch-screen iPhone or iPod Touch. Like many online versions of the game, the mission in Aqueduct is to use available tiles to create a pipeline between a spigot and drain before you turn on the water supply. Aqueduct adds to the old pipeline formula by including conveyor belt tiles, teleports, door switches, and more, to create a fun and challenging time-waster that's easy to pick up and play wherever you are.

When we first started playing Aqueduct, we weren't immediately … Read more

Cleaning a water bottle is not an easy process, especially if you've been drinking something other than water from it. Even scrubbing the bottom of the bottle seems entirely impossible.

A bottle may look clean, but if you use it long enough, you can never get it to smell clean again--powdered mixes are particularly nasty culprits. The Clean Bottle takes a different approach than encouraging us to try to scrub out a bottle through one small opening. Instead, the Clean Bottle has a screw-off bottom so that you can access to the entire bottle when cleaning it. The bottom … Read more

Water out of the tap, though convenient and a modern marvel, just isn't good enough. We can do better. And we certainly try to: from filtered water pitchers to UV water systems, our options for home-based drinking water has never been more abundant. And that's not even considering bottled water--either in little single serving sizes, or those gigantic bottles that are hard to lift. There are pros and cons for each of these water delivery methods, which would imply that the concept could be improved upon.

Taking water directly from the air, the EcoloBlue 30 Atmospheric Water Generator … Read more

Water is not only the next big environmental issue, but also the next savings opportunity, according to several companies.

A survey conducted by research analyst Ethical Corporation in May 2010 found that 99 percent of corporate sustainability managers saw water becoming a top priority for businesses in the next 5 to 10 years. The report "Unlocking the Profit in Water Savings" found that 52 percent of sustainability managers ranked "water stewardship" within the top five most important issues they now deal with.

But more interesting is the hard data supporting the trend. Companies have found that … Read more

Meet WaterBoy, an odd and scary performance art project by one Marque Cornblatt. WaterBoy is a series of water tanks that look much like fishbowls. Cornblatt wears them on his head while walking around as if nothing is wrong.

As a major aquaphobe (showers over baths!), I find every single moment of the above video, called "Bubble," excruciating to watch. Cornblatt calls his devices "the leading brand of self-contained, portable submergence environments." I call them a unique nightmare from which my real nightmares are likely to be generated. I'll be sleeping with a ShamWow and … Read more

When I first heard about the proposed merger of music promoter and venue-owner Live Nation and ticket broker Ticketmaster, I predicted that ticket prices for big-name musical acts would rise. Now that the merger's completed and ticket revenues are down for the first part of 2010, Live Nation is admitting that it's hoping to charge higher prices for desirable concert seats.

The reason? Simple economics. As long as customers are willing to spend $500 or $1,000 on front-row seats, why sell those seats for $150 and let a scalper or broker make all that extra money? In … Read more

At one point having running water in the house was a novelty, even a luxury. Thankfully, indoor plumbing became commonplace, and we all moved along. At some point, simply getting a glass of drinking water from the tap became a reality of the past, as people discovered that filtering water at home usually improved the taste by removing chlorine while at the same time reducing heavy metals and some pollutants. Running water through a carbon filter in turn became commonplace, and as it stands today, many people use or at least know someone who uses a filtered pitcher from which … Read more

Sharing images online is a lot of fun, but it's not always easy to control what happens to your work once it's been uploaded. Watermarks can help prevent image theft by making sure that your name, logo, or other information is never separated from your photos. Easy Batch Watermark is a basic program that lets users apply watermarks to multiple images at once, making the watermark process fast and easy.

Easy Batch Watermark is, as its name implies, pretty easy to use. The interface looks a little dated and clunky, but it's fairly intuitive. Users simply select … Read more