Crave

(Credit: Jerry Jalava)

This is a story about Jerry Jalava, a Finnish software developer who lost part of his finger in a motorcycle accident last July. According to his friend, Henri Bergius, when the surgeon assigned to work on Jalava's prosthetic finger discovered his hacking history, he made a clever suggestion: incorporate a USB key into the new digit.

The prosthetic finger contains a 2GB USB key, and Jalava also loaded it with Billix distribution, CouchDBX, and Ajatus to run off the drive, throwing even more geek cred into the mix.

When Jalava needs the drive, he simply pulls it off his left hand, plugs it in, and comes back to pick it up after the transfers are finished. That dispels any parallels to that scene in "Robocop" when he uses the giant spike that comes out of his hand to transfer data from the OCP criminal database to the computer in his head.

Check out more pictures of Jalava's cybernetic finger in the slideshow below, and be sure to listen to Thursday's episode of The 404 Podcast to hear 30 jokes in a row about what would happen if this were to go on another part of the body.

Jerry Jalava's USB key prosthetic finger

As CNET News reported earlier Thursday, Microsoft has tapped Jerry Seinfeld to star in a $300 million marketing campaign aimed at countering negative perceptions of its oft-maligned Vista operating system.

The comedian, best known for his eponymous NBC sitcom, will reportedly get $10 million for the campaign, which is expected to play off the phrase "Windows, Not Walls," and to stress the connection between people and ideas.

Comedians Will Ferrell and Chris Rock were also considered for the new advertising spots, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported details of the marketing push. The paper said Seinfeld will appear alongside former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in some ads.

But is a '90s sitcom star really the best celebrity to help make Vista cool? Tell us what you think in our poll. And if Seinfeld shouldn't be the master of the Vista domain, who should be? Let us know in our TalkBack section.

Brighter, crisper images are the goal for top Intel researchers in their work on future graphics technology.

I talked Wednesday with Intel's Jerry Bautista, the co-director of the Tera-scale computing research program, and Daniel Pohl, an Intel researcher. I focused mostly on a concept called ray tracing but also questioned them about Intel's upcoming Larrabee processor.

Reflections: ray tracing versus rasterized graphics

(Credit: Intel)

First, some background. Ray tracing--whether you agree or disagree about its viability--has been a fairly hot topic. It has been mentioned frequently by Intel over the last six months. An Intel blog titled "Real Time Ray-Tracing: The End of Rasterization?" and later comments by Intel executives that the company is looking at doing ray tracing on its processors set the stage for debate on the viability of ray tracing in mainstream gaming.

Ray tracing is a technique for rendering three-dimensional graphics using complex light interactions, allowing the creation of extremely detailed reflective surfaces, for example, with stunning photorealistic results.

In the future, ray tracing may compete with today's traditional raster-based graphics used in games running on Nvidia and AMD-ATI graphics processors. Intel claims ray tracing runs better on general-purpose processors, such as its Core 2 Quad processors, than on traditional graphics processors. Ray tracing may also run on future processors such as Larrabee.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini alluded to this at a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference last month. Asked who Intel's major future competitors are, Otellini responded, "In graphics, as we move up the food chain, we're bouncing into ATI via AMD and Nvidia more than we used to. And I don't expect that to abate anytime soon."

(Credit: Popgadget)

We should have seen this one coming after learning of Matsushita's plans to make slimmed-down massage chairs. Now another Japanese company has developed what appears to be the ultimate fat-analysis machine.

Tokyo-based Tanita--whose slogan is "the body fat experts"--has gone well beyond its bevy of smart scales to produce "a precise electronic, abdominal fat meter that can measure the amount of fat deep inside of you, even around your organs," according to Popgadget. The AB-101 does seem more civilized than being assaulted by those inhumane calipers, but it still looks like a cross between a TSA scanner and an MRI machine.

Perhaps it's all part of a national obsession to make sure that the Wii Fit doesn't become known as the Wii Fat, at least in Japan.

Movable Life is a browser-based way to log into Second Life, though it only offers the ability to move around and chat.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I wrote earlier that I has asked the super-connected virtual worlds expert Jerry Paffendorf what the best thing he had seen at the Virtual Worlds conference here and that he had pointed me to inDuality.

Not long afterward, I ran into another friend, the also super-connected virtual worlds expert Eric Rice and asked him the same question. He pointed me to a technology called Movable Life, which he proudly said allowed him to run Second Life on his iPhone.

Well, I had to check that out. So a little later, I found my way over to the booth of a little Japanese company called 3Di, and asked for a demo of Movable Life.

Seconds later, I was logging into Second Life via a Web browser, and moments after that, I was in-world.

This was, however, a very limited version of SL, as was quickly pointed out by the company's Adam Johnson.

The idea, it turns out, is to provide SL users a way to get in-world for simple things like chatting and instant messaging and moving around, all on a very light client that, because it's Web-based, works behind a firewall.

So, while you can get in-world, you can't actually see a normal in-world view. All you see, in fact, is a map view that you can move around with a Google Maps interface.

Still, you also have access to your friends list, as well as your inventory. So I was able to IM a friend who was in-world at the moment and have a quick conversation.

Like inDuality, Movable Life has limited applications for now. But Johnson said that in the future, he plans to incorporate many more features, including a full in-world view, voice chat, the SL payment system and inventory and real-estate management tools.

Those things will be cool, but for now, it's just kind of cool to be able to log into Second Life from a Web browser.

And, of course, an iPhone.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I was walking around the Virtual Worlds conference here this afternoon when I ran into Jerry Paffendorf, the co-author of the Metaverse Roadmap report and the current co-founder of a stealth start-up called Wello Horld.

inDuality is a software front-end that will allow users to access multiple virtual worlds through a single Web browser-based interface

(Credit: Pelican Crossing)

Paffendorf knows all, and so I eagerly asked him what was the best thing he'd seen at the show.

Without hesitating, he pointed me over to a small corner of the expo floor and to the little booth of a skunkworks project called inDuality developed by a company called Pelican Crossing and another known as IBM.

Well, when I finally found my way over to the inDuality booth, I was duly impressed. This is a very cool alpha technology that lets anyone--well, anyone using Internet Explorer in Windows XP or Vista--run a Web browser-based front-end for a whole bunch of different virtual worlds.

This is a pretty nifty little application. The idea is that you wander into a courtyard and are faced with a bunch of kiosks, each representing a portal into its corresponding virtual world. So, you could walk up to one and suddenly you're in Club Penguin. Back out--with a back arrow, since this is all Web-based--and you can then walk to the Second Life kiosk. Bam, you're at the sign-in screen for SL.

Pelican Crossing CEO Clive Jackson told me that by using an OpenID identity, a user could pop around the various virtual worlds with a single login, and that the inDuality client takes care of the grunt work of downloading and installing all the various virtual world applications.

Here, Second Life is seen being used from inside the Web browser.

(Credit: Pelican Crossing)

In addition, Jackson explained that it's possible to build little controls into the various virtual worlds, or onto the Web interface that can launch different actions. So, for example, you could have a button in Club Penguin that would launch Second Life. Or vice-versa.

This is not interoperable worlds, however. Once you leave one for another, you're gone.

Anyway, this is very new technology, and it probably will be awhile before it has any measurable utility. But for now, at least, it's a pretty cool thing to be able to click through all these various environments without even needing to run a single piece of stand-alone software.

Thanks, Jerry.

(Credit: iLounge)

With so many iPod accessories geared toward fitness activities, we appreciate that someone is catering to our lifestyle as well--in the kitchen. The DCD 778 "Docking Entertainment System" from Philips is a compact multimedia system designed to mount under a cabinet alongside the microwave and other appliances.

Kitchen systems are nothing new, but this one packs in a lot more than the usual combo. iLounge says this all-in-one package has a TV with an 8.5-inch wide LCD and can play DVDs, CDs and AM/FM radio and, of course, iPod tunes with two 2-inch speakers. And even though it costs $400, you'll make that up in a hurry when you consider all the price-gouging snack counters you'll avoid at the movie theater.

(Credit: No Fact Zone)

I know. I know. It's too cold for ice cream. (My weather widget currently reads 12 degrees.) And this is a gadget blog. But I really couldn't resist this one. Apparently, the rumors might be somewhat true (truthy?) that famed ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry's is releasing a Stephen Colbert-inspired flavor. Why is this at all relevant? Recall that Mr. Colbert is one of the Internet's foremost renegades, eager to transform Wii Boxing into a political statement, hack Wikipedia for his own benefit, and master the art of YouTube self-promotion.

So that's why I find it totally Craveable to broadcast the news that it's possible we'll be seeing the advent of "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" in freezers around the nation in April. (Will it still be 12 degrees then?) No, it's not red, white, and blue--looks like this will be vanilla ice cream with chunks of fudge-covered waffle cone and caramel swirl. Mmmm. From what "anonymous sources" on blogs have been saying, this could actually be real.

And if it's not real, goshdarnit, I'm going to go on Wikipedia and make it real.

(Via Best Week Ever.)