The Oyster’s Garter

Dogs, small children, and outdoor kitties beware: The makers of the Roomba, iRobot, are working on a robot lawnmower. The Roomba, for those lacking in gadgeteer friends, is a robot vacuum cleaner. If R2D2 were squashed into a 6-inch- tall disc, you’d know what a Roomba looks like. Once activated, the Roomba drives itself around a room, vacuuming as it goes. When it hits a wall, or a chair, it will try to change course, or back up and set off in a  new direction. Supposedly, given time, it will vacuum the whole room. I have friends who love theirs, so I’m guess it’s actually pretty successful at sucking dirt. But the real fun is when you get some Roomba-pet interaction going on. As a rule, cats do NOT like vacuum cleaners, and self-propelled vacuum cleaners are simply more than their walnut-sized brains can handle. Oh the hissing I’ve seen! Oh the crazed attempts to chew the Roomba to bits! Good times all around.

Now imagine the same device, but bigger, and armed with blades spinning at high speed. Now you’ve got the iMower, which iRobot just filed a patent for, and you’ll understand why Scruffy had best put on his sprinting shoes. Well, maybe Scruffy better already have those shoes, since it turns out there are already a couple of automated lawn mowers: RoboMower, from an Israeli firm (pictured above) and LawnBott from Kyodo America. Who knew?

Addition: They also come in the solar powered variety. (Thanks Greg)

[Via Engadget and Robotstocknews]

I downloaded the new Firefox last night. Truly, it is the fastest browser since…well, since Firefox 1.0. I timed it against the heaviest sites I use: ESPN, CNN, and Google Reader and it beat Firefox 2 and Safari by a mile. Since both of those beat Internet Explorer, at least on the Mac side, I think by the transitive property Firefox can claim superiority. I haven’t yet run across any of the functional improvements. Mostly seems to work the same, to me.

Oh, and the upgrade is really easy, too. I installed the new Firefox and it kept all my bookmarks, all my settings, and my cache. It’s early yet, but thumbs up so far.

Eric’s Apocalypse Averting Plan No. 1: Use electricity to power as many devices as is reasonably possible. Electricity, once you’ve got it, runs totally cleanly. No carbon output, less noise, fewer moving parts required, and therefore less maintenance needed. And the first machine that should go all electric would have to be our cars, right? Even though the Tesla is technically on the market, the cheapest way to use an electric motor in everyday driving is through the use of conventional hybrids or plug-in hybrids. Conventional hybrids use the gas motor and braking action to recharge, while plug-ins recharge by plugging into the wall at night. Plug-ins also have a small gas motor to extend their range.

But when I start spouting on about electricity and cars, I often get the same response: “But Eric, sure you eliminate tailpipe emissions, but you’re just adding to the pollution at the power plant. We’d have to burn even more nasty, dirty coal to power those snazzy machines.” It’s a major flaw in EAAP1, you know?

Thankfully the Electrical Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense council also got tired of hearing that argument, so they did some research. The study (PDF) compares the CO2-per-mile of normal gas-powered cars, regular hybrids (like Priuses), and plug-in hybrids. The results were most gratifying: the plug-in hybrid produces far less greenhouse gas than conventional cars, even if all the electricity they slurp up at night is produced at a sooty old coal plant. The MIT magazine Technology Review used the study to generate the table I’ve included after the jump. It shows that conventional cars produce 452 grams of CO2/mile, about 28% more than plug-in hybrids, even if the plug-ins get all their electricity from coal-burning power plants.

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The cell phone software maker Qualcomm happens to be based in San Diego, so I actually received a press release for Handsolo yesterday, though I failed to open it (I get a lot of press releases). It contained a link to this video, the hands down winner (a pun you’ll soon get) for funniest April Fool joke this year.

This company is concerned that geeks can’t see their laptop screens because when we sit by our pools, the sun is overly bright. Silly company. Everyone knows that geeks never go out in the sun. It might melt our D&D figurines. Anyway, this photo was too wonderful not to post.

There really has never been a good way to recycle old electronics. They can’t be thrown into the trash, because electronics are built out of all kinds of compounds and heavy metals that seep into the ground and eventually into the ground water. The virtuous among us who bring electronics to recyclers actually aren’t doing any good either, since recyclers often extract the valuable metals - copper wiring, gold from the microchips – and then chuck the rest into the landfill.

So what to do? Sell it to Second Rotation, apparently. This company is trying to make a living buying your old electronics, refurbishing them and reselling them. They apparently can resell 90% of the gear they get. The rest they recycle. Are they giving it to the sleazy recyclers or good ones? I’ve got a call in to them to try and find out the deal. Still, if they can resell 90% of my old electronics, that’s at least two of the three gadgets we have in a drawer at home.

[Via Ars Technica]

I was so hoping I’d never have to run again. Unfortunately, although playing Nintendo Wii games does burn 50% more calories than playing regular console games, it doesn’t even approach the calories burnt by normal exercise. It’s not so much that I’m surprised by this result as I have the sense of a million teenage voices hoping to get a Wii suddenly silenced.

Microsoft is issuing a patch for the troubled latest version of the windows operating system, Vista, to “address issues of reliability, performance, and stability.” Really? Is that all?

No doubt they’re worried now that Apple has released their latest OS, Leopard, to rave reviews.

Nothing makes a Mac person more smug than the woes of a Microsoft product. And man does it sure look like Windows Vista is a turkey. A short summary of the problems: It won’t let you make Firefox your default browser, the pre-installed backup software doesn’t work properly, software makers aren’t jumping to upgrade their software to use Vista functionality, and it will check “the legitimacy” of software on your computer and even delete stuff it doesn’t like. Actually, that last one is a doozy. Here’s what how a reviewer form the Toronto Star described the pre-installed anti-virus software Windows Defender:

Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated “high” or “severe,” even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

Really? It will just delete stuff? That’s so not OK.  And those are just a few of the myriad reasons not to use Vista that the Internet provided. No wonder a C-Net blogger is calling for Microsoft to just abandon the whole project.

Looks like IBM was really ready to jump into the office software market. Today they announced a free downloadable beta version of their office suite, Lotus Symphony. I’d love to download it and tell you how wonderful it is or isn’t, but no Mac version as yet. Alas.